I love the violin, love everything about it, including the instrument itself. It is curvy, smooth, and so dear to me now.
As I returned from a break from my weekly lessons, this first full week of the new year, I reflected on all I’ve learned and how far I’ve come.
Still, I won’t ever entirely master
the instrument I love so much, but that’s to be expected.
My bow stays straight now, which is an achievement. My teacher sees my progression of skill, even if I have trouble seeing the same.
I am fascinated by everything to do with this beautiful instrument. When I started, that’s all I knew. I knew I loved the sound and I had no idea, at that time, all that a violin is made up of. I got a rather pleasant sound out of it, even on my own, before the lessons first started. This leading me to believe it might not be as hard as I’d always heard.
Was it harder than learning the piano? Would it be more difficult to learn to play than the clarinet, which I played briefly, in high school?
I knew I loved it and wanted to learn to play, more than I’d ever wanted to learn to play guitar. You played it with a bow, but I’d never really seen one, let alone held one in my hand.
I was turning thirty-two, (it’ll be three years now) next month. I rented a violin for my birthday. I liked it so much, with no guarantee of how the practicing would go, where it might take me or not. Yet, after only a few months, when I went back to renew the rental, I walked out as owner instead.
I didn’t grow up loving classical music and still don’t love that style. I do have a lot more appreciation for it now though, whenever I listen to some. I do see, after knowing my own violin teacher for all this time, all that it takes (the commitment and the skill) to become a strong player. I mean strong, physically, which is something I couldn’t have known until I myself felt all the muscle groups it takes to play.
I want to set myself a 2019 resolution, if I can bring myself to use that word, for what I want from the violin this year.
I’ve have a lousy practice schedule. I don’t play for very many people. I don’t realize, well enough, how far I’ve actually come.
I do know, something inside me, it keeps me going with it, when setting it aside and just not picking it up often feels like the easier option. Of course, it would be easier, but why would I want to take the easy rout anyway?
I think often on what it takes, the mastering of something, anything but especially a tricky instrument such as the violin.
Some people would be super impatient by now, with the level of progress I’ve arrived at, but I choose to not look at my situation in quite that way.
We spend our lives, working to master one thing, before we think we can move right on to something else. I’d settle for having confidence to be able to play a violin part, a solo, on a song my brother wrote. That would be nice.
I’d like to master the craft of writing and the art of it too. Same goes for the instrument that I love. Fingers crossed, but I think I’ll ask other people to do that, as I need my fingers, uncrossed, to be able to play.
Next week’s practice theme: harmonics.
This has been day six of Just Jot It January
and the word giver for today was Sadje
to round out the first weekend of the month.
When asked by author Angela Yuriko Smith what we’re looking for, Editor-in-Chief JT Lachausse replied:
“We want what you haven’t seen. Allow me to be dramatic: Imagine that every piece of art is represented by a stone. Many stones make up the mountains and buildings, but even more hide beneath the surface. We are so familiar and fond of the overground rocks, but in the caves and oceans-deep, there are stories that tell things wildly. Desperately, furiously, without great laborious sanitizing or editorial puncturing.”
I am thankful for Just Jot It January
and the writing it has helped me do all month long, but even good things must come to an end.
I hear, when going through a rough time, that it can’t last forever. I guess.
I did peter out as the end of the month drew near, but I wanted to share this here from Judy
because I enjoy her and her blog/writing.
I am thankful for another enjoyable lunch with a friend.
Talk of movies she has not seen (Forget Paris) and drinking mimosas on Valentine’s Day, for brunch and going to hear Margaret Atwood speak in Stratford.
I am thankful for a catch up violin lesson.
Our practice room this time contained a piano and that helped me with my scales.
I am thankful to get the chance to have an introduction conference call with the other writers participating on the project about braille.
I am thankful for the movie The Post
because of the inspiring role, (Katharine Graham) played expertly by Meryl Streep as a woman who had to make a super hard choice and did it with grace and dignity.
Not an easy time to be female and in charge of a newspaper like that, having to make the hardest of decisions, so much at stake.
I am thankful I got a chance, before the movie, to speak to the manager in charge at my local theatre.
He couldn’t be of much help with the issue of audio description at Woodstock’s movie theatre, but he gave me the card of the head office out in B.C.
I am still determined to work, this year, on changing this policy of there not being enough demand, so I can see a movie and not have to make family or friends describe while they, too, are trying to enjoy the show.
I am thankful I could listen in on a conference call about Braille Literacy Canada
and the importance of braille today.
I am thankful for family and their warm, heated homes to flea to, when I wake to a freezing house and such icy cold tile floors.
Things, at the start of 2018, are changing up bit with the FTSF crew.
My word for 2018 is “stoker,” which also means to stir things up, so I am all for this. I admit, I often have a difficult time with change of most kinds, but I am really trying. Still, though the list may have changed and has grown over my lifetime, here is my list of ten favourite things:
Favourite Thing Ten – Water
I love the roar and rush and rumble of waterfalls. It’s the trickling of a stream, brook, or creek. Or, the increasing and then the decreasing of a wave that’s coming and then going, washing in and back out again, leaving ripples in its wake. It’s the blue, green, rocky, sandy bottom of a lake or ocean. It’s my favourite metaphor for life, both the good and the bad of it, the scary and the sublime. Its power and its purity. It’s clear and clean, or heavy with mineral count. It is the refreshment in a glass or the lapping at my feet, pouring down my throat (to filter through my kidney) or threatening to wash me away.
Favourite Thing Nine – Marine Life
These are the creatures that swim, float, glide, or drift. They range from the smallest crustaceans to the largest squid/octopus, jellyfish, ray, or whale. It lives down on the sandy floor, at the deepest depths, or skimming and skidding along its sunlit surface. It is hunt or be hunted, all while storms rage, boats speed on by, nets drift and dangle, and waves carry it all along, currents deciding the course. It’s gills and blowholes and claws and fins and tentacles. It’s all the colours of rainbows in skies above. It’s camouflaging in all shades and underwater backgrounds.
Favourite Thing Eight – Space
It’s my earliest adventure, escape dream. It’s the dark, still, and the silence. It’s the circles and the rings and the orbit. It’s the blue of ice and the yellow/orange of fire from stars and swirling gases that envelop giant planets. It’s massive red spots as storms and dozens of Arctics stacked on one another, all the way out to the outer ranges of the galaxy. It’s yellow, blue and green and white, and red, and black that’s more than night is or will ever be. It’s infinite. It’s out there, somewhere.
Favourite Thing Seven – The Four Seasons
It’s the northern hemisphere and North America, central, southwestern. It is broken up into quarters of a year, here in (north more than south) of Canada. It is the smell of snow, the cold breath of it on my skin, and the feeling of invigoration. It’s the silence of the snow, the rustle of the warm breeze in the trees. It’s the intense heat and the brightness and burning from the sun, the kind to make any exposed skin surface feel like it’s on fire. It’s the birds of every temp, born to brave it or fly away from it, flocking back again. It’s the Canada geese, flying south and coming back home after long wait of months passed. It’s the early darkness, short days, green of new growth and rebirth. It’s the sprinklers and the mowers and the bikes. It’s the rustle and the crunch and the shuffle of dried out leaves. It’s the rain and the mist and the sleet and the snow, wet, soggy, heavy, and slush under boots and shoes. It’s the puddles after the rain and the icy spots before the thaw.
Favourite Thing Six – String Instruments
I love playing with a bow instead of a pick or a reed. I love the melancholy and the heartbreak of such a sound. I love the feeling, the shape of my own personal violin. The wooden body and the strings, stretched by pegs. It’s the deep melody of the cello and my newness, inability to tell difference between violin and viola still. It’s the power of the bow in my right hand, my chin and chest holding up my instrument, while my left arm, hand, fingers hold the neck and both sides of my brain try to figure out how to work separate and yet together, all at once, to produce more than the sound of a tortured animal and more of the notes and the scales I struggle to get straight in my own ear.
Favourite Thing Five – Art
I loved the visual and the sculpting, with lines, shape, colour, word, image, and sound. I love how creativity flows from each of us like unique perfume, like the individuality of every snowflake that falls from the cold sky.
Favourite Thing Four – The Purring of a Cat
I gently place my two fingers on my cat’s throat as he purrs. I feel it reverberate through his whole body as he settles down against my legs. He makes my chronic pain bearable, on the most unbearable of all days.
Favourite Thing Three – Literature
I love how it can be an act of courage, of hope, of truth. I love how, in essence, it sweeps me up and away. I love how it is about all of us and none of us and each of us, individually, on a personal level, still stretching out to infinity and some far off, far flung lands.
Favourite Thing Two – Travel
I can do it on foot, by car, train, bus, boat, or plane. Or, I can do it, go there in my mind, anytime., even as my sight fades and my memory and yearning grow stronger. I love the people and the places and the things. I love how stepping foot somewhere new or old, on returning or first approaching, that I am someone new, on my own, personal journey of discovery and upon discovering.
Favourite Thing Number One – Niece/Nephew Voices and Laughter
It sounds so grown up or only days from becoming words. I love the sweetness of the high pitched and the similar giggling of siblings. I love that it can turn, from sad to joyful in a single second of exuberant speed. I love the ring of it, the jangle of it, and the shimmering, swinging, swooping crystal clarity it brings, on all sides, expanding the walls of my heart as an aunt.
So there it is, my top ten list, not affiliated with David Letterman’s old show. Sure, some things are more to-the-point than others. I can go from the highly specific to the wide expanse of a thing, perhaps giving me the chance to write fifty favourite things, condensed down into ten, abstract or less so, as I hate to choose.
“I dreamed I saw a great wave climbing over green lands and above the hills. I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet. A light shown behind me, but I could not turn. I could only stand there, waiting.”
—Lord of the Rings
I was recently brought back to my love of LOTR and this quote jumped out at me when I heard it again. I feel this way a lot now.
People tell me not to be scared, but I can’t help it. I can take up violin and yoga and other things, to keep focused on the positive, but I feel this quote intensely and I wish people would stop trying to make me feel something that has taken root and is, for better or for worse, how I feel.
It’s nearly Christmas and I am making my way through these last few weeks before it arrives upon us. The news around the world, this week, was not much improved from previous ones.
Then, another man and his family were targeted, in a racially motivated attack,
by a man with a bat in a WAL-MART parking lot.
And this was just in Ontario mind you.
So, I sometimes start off my weekly TToT post sharing my fears and concerns and the things that feel so out of my control and which are so often wildly unfair about the world.
Then I list what I am thankful for, to help me get through the week and focus on the beautiful things and the magic to be found all around me.
From last week’s TToT…the audio piece I did with my brother will be included in the holiday marathon radio show.
The man in charge asked how to pronounce our last name. He isn’t the first to ask that. He also asked how we’d like to be billed and the question was a new one, hadn’t been asked that way before.
Whose name should go first?
I am thankful for more writing support/discussion with those who know and understand.
My two writer friends, I originally found on Facebook, are such a pleasure to spend a few hours with.
We talk writing and I found out one of them wrote a children’s book about Helen Keller.
The other is a knowledgeable scientist/science writer.
I learn so much from them, have learned so much, in this last year since we first met.
I am thankful for a pleasant holiday mall experience.
I found a bright and friendly deer.
I found my favourite holiday scent, vanilla bean. I got myself some hand soap, shower gel, and body spray.
I found a few gifts in my favourite store, that which is full of mostly books, but not all.
I went in for books and came out with a super soft blanket. Still, I hope bookstores never disappear like Blockbuster has.
I am thankful for my mom’s delicate and detailed Christmas care.
Clever, original, and inventive.
She decorates my home, even though I can’t see much. I don’t put in the work and she comes over and makes the place feel like Christmas.
This year she only made the pine branches she had look the shape of a Christmas tree, but soft pine this time. I see the bright white lights she adds and then comes the star.
No photo can capture it, but the star wouldn’t stay up on such a soft pine branched tree and so she used one of my old white canes. She put it up the back and this was enough to steady the star on top.
I am constantly in awe at the things she comes up with. It’s always been that way, as long as I can remember.
That’s my mom alright, all three of those, the exact definition of ingenious.
I am thankful for a second favourite Christmas gift.
My sister loves Pinterest and found a Harry Potter quote, printed it out and framed it for me.
This has been the week of surprises, let’s call them semi Christmas presents, both I was not expecting.
As for another Christmas present I was given early, Canada and all the snow might want to put a damper on that one tonight.
What is priceless about my violin, about Halloween 2017, and about writing?
My violin rental was my birthday present when I turned thirty-two. I chose to buy it for myself, once I learned how much I loved the challenge and wanted to keep going with it. I found a young woman who had been playing for nearly twenty years, who was a student and could use the twenty dollars a week. I admit, I get a pretty good deal there. She gets to teach me. Feel bad for her sometimes on that. I learn, but it sometimes ends up taking me a few tries, at least.
Buying a violin…hundreds of dollars. A violin lesson…$20.
The feeling of peace while I concentrate and play, the sensation of accomplished determination of practicing, and the sweet and beautiful sound of such an instrument…
PRICELESS.
Halloween this year was full of pizza and plenty of treats. The weather could have been a lot worse. It was cold, but at least there was no rain or snow. My nephew came into my house and immediately removed his socks, as he likes to do. It took plenty of gentle reminders, which turned into nagging reminders that if he wanted to go trick-or-treating, he needed to put them back on his feet.
Candy costs money. Costume making costs his mother hours of time and attention.
Hearing my five-year-old nephew counting his candy, showing up he can count all the way to one hundred (even though he may have counted some pieces of that candy more than once), and the pure innocence and recently discovered joy of the holiday in his voice…
PRICELESS.
Writing is, for me, like breathing. It’s getting to share here, to speak out on the things that matter to me, and all this is, of course, priceless.
All the courses with their enrolment fees, the expensive technological equipment I need to replace the hand/eye connection I no longer have, and the newly sought after paid work I have found and fear I will find no more of.
Okay,, I did it again. What week is this, exactly, that I came late to the party and linked up last? I keep this as a priority, but it does end up falling down a point…or five.
Birthday photos come a week later, first of my time holding my niece, by the swing set she is too young to enjoy just yet. I am still thinking birthdays…my parents and a friend and so on.
But forest fires continue to burn on the west coast and far away there is violence, such that I cannot imagine, and here I sit, writing another list of what I am thankful for in this life.
My brother made it. spaghetti has been a favourite food in my family for a long time, since our traditional spaghetti dinner, every Christmas Eve when I was young.
Now my brother makes it so well, as he’s been perfecting it. We went another way with the food in the title of our podcast (the one I was there to make when this meal was made) but, if I could have come up with a clever enough name using spaghetti, I would have.
He now takes care, not to eat sauce from a can, but to make it with vegetables and spices, allowing it to simmer.
My brother has perfected spaghetti and my sister has perfected cupcakes.
I am thankful for the birth and birthday of a lifelong friend.
We’ve been friends since we were ten. She was one of the few kids to approach me, on that first day at a new school. I had felt like a bit of a sideshow then, but our friendship grew into so much more.
I think of her now, so far away and on a path I never could have guessed at, and I smile and put my hand to my heart.
I am thankful for a long chat with a writer friend.
She writes about science. She is a scientist who loves to write, I suppose it would be better to say.
We talked for a long time, about everything concerning writing, as we are both trying to make it, using our skills, on our own.
Though our lives are vastly different from one another, our thoughts often come back to the same thing, something involving the art and the struggle of being a writer.
I am thankful for a gift of Gummy Bears.
I was working on a piece, on deadline, and someone knew it.
They sent me a treat, even if it was just a picture of that treat, a virtual treat as it were.
Still, to know they were thinking of me, there in that moment, was a nice thing, plain and simply.
I am thankful for superstitions like the famous Friday the 13th.
They have given me something to write about and to think about. They have caused me to challenge what I think and what I believe.
I am thankful for a visit with my neighbour where she helped me figure out how to take action in a few areas of my life.
She is good at narrowing an issue or a particular problem down. She keeps me thinking ahead and on task. Checking in on me periodically has helped a great deal since knowing her.
I am thankful for a delicious lunch/latte with another writing friend.
The wrap and the latte were just the thing for a Friday, as tired as I felt. I like hearing her take on things and I hope to be an ear to listen with for her, someone she knows she can trust.
I am thankful for a challenging violin lesson and yoga session, both within two days.
New poses to strengthen. New parts to repeat and drill into my thick head.
It is all a challenge, but a giant breath of fresh air too.
I am thankful for a friend’s writing getting published and read this week.
The anthology I was published in two years ago is being rereleased this summer. I received the surprise email to confirm I still wanted to be a part of the project.
I’m thankful for a successful first violin lesson in weeks.
Other than writing, I have never felt so frustrated one minute and wanting to give up and then so determined the next minute as I feel with the violin. It’s my roller coaster.
I’m thankful for an anniversary celebrated with my friends at “The Elsewhere Region”.
We celebrated the existence of writing group, two years on, with blueberry cheesecake and, you guessed it, writing.
I have written more fiction, more stories, starting during those nights in the group than I’ve done on my own time in a while. The short story I submitted to the Alice Munro Short Story Contest, for instance, was begun there. Though I found out this week that I did not qualify with it (bummer), I am still glad it came out of that place.
I hope there are many more still to come.
I’m thankful for the chance to see my sister included in a team of dedicated women.
My dad and I walked to see her game the one night. We stood there and I listened as best I could. It was the sound of the coaches leading their players, encouraging them by shouting positive reinforcement and the other teammates cheering them on that was so nice to see.
My sister hasn’t played in over ten years, since before motherhood and time gone by, which makes it all the much harder to jump back into a game like baseball. I admire that.
Hearing a group of women encouraging each other to do their best. I wish I could be a part of something like that.
I’m thankful that my nephew is getting more comfortable with his baseball.
He is still so little, but he will get there. Maybe he will play for many years and maybe he’ll ultimately decide baseball isn’t for him. Either way, he gets to learn about being on a team, just like his mom.
I’m thankful for my sister, two years older.
Our two-year age gap feels like nothing really. She will always be my big sister though. She is one of my biggest influences, an example I follow, two years behind and I like celebrating her every May that comes around with the loveliness of spring.
I’m thankful for a Friday morning surprise phone call.
I’ve volunteered with the Kidney Foundation of Canada for years, since soon after my transplant, and now I was contacted about getting involved more so, possibly with public speaking opportunities about diagnosis, dialysis, living donation, organ transplant, and hopefully to offer some hope that life can be good for twenty years with care and a little bit of luck.
I’m thankful for an enlightening and enjoyable conversation with my new neighbour.
She showed me around her home and we sat at her kitchen table for over two hours, talking about writing, the town we live in, family, and she wanted to meet the rest of mine.
She came by two days later, for a drink, to meet my brothers and my sister-in-law and the kids.
I’m thankful for a family day.
We were celebrating my sister’s birthday when we could all be together.
It was Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada. This means the carnival comes close to my house and we all walked down there together.
My nephews went on the cars and my niece went on a few rides all by herself. She is braver than I ever was when I was her age.
We went on the gravity ride with her (my brothers and I) and it felt both good and bad.
It was a glimpse of what going on a ride like that was like as a kid, moments of pure pleasure, and then I’d return to being thirty-three and I’d feel a little ill and I was off balance for a long time after the ride ended.
We passed games with those people yelling and bells ringing and buzzers buzzing. It was loud and a little went a long way, but I remember what it was like to find such a thrill from a place like that.
The child roller coaster was loudest of all. Every click/thud of the cars as they went around the bends and up and down, up and down. Life is loud and uncomfortable a lot of times.
I’m thankful for extended family that are cool and care about what’s most important.
whole front porch
We had a lovely afternoon sitting on my front porch and talking about everything under the sun. My aunt and uncle spoke about my cousins and we discussed movies and animals and family.
As for roller coasters…
Buckle up because we’re only about ten feet up the clicky part.
—The Daily Show
Whether it’s 45, a sicko who attacks a concert full of young girls, an attack on a bus in Egypt, a knife attack by a white supremacist on a train, I can’t seem to get off the roller coaster, but gratitude for family and fun and flowers takes the edge off the nausea a little bit.
I think about language as I sit in the quiet room of my local library on certain Wednesday nights. I am trying to come up with a bit of story to read out loud at the end of my writing group and I want to use the right sort of words and sentences.
Anne Rice is one who believes in adverbs, even though many so-called writing pros condemn the use of them. Ugh!
How am I supposed to know what is the right way to go?
I’m just glad I’ve managed/mastered the English language this far, when I wish I’d focused harder and done better at learning French when I was in school. I am proud that Canada is a multi-language nation and it can only serve as a benefit.
My family doesn’t all speak Polish or German. I wish we did. My father’s parents didn’t teach him their native European languages, by speaking them at home when he was young. I think they were so focused on learning English, as still fairly new to North America, that they couldn’t be bothered. I hope they didn’t feel any sort of shame surrounding the speak of their birth countries, being recent immigrants to Canada.
My mom learned German, as my grandparents always spoke it, but a certain dialect of the language. My grandpa used to tell me stories of how he didn’t even speak English before going to school. It was always German in his home as a child.
My mom speaks some and understands it. This allows her to speak to my uncle who visits from Germany every few years.
I was recently blown away by the beauty and rhythm of Spanish, as I prepared to travel to Mexico. I tried, for months, to learn some so I wouldn’t be totally lost when I went down there. By the end of my week, I’d gotten better at recognizing what was being said around me, but I would have needed many more weeks there to be able to speak any with much confidence.
Language is hard. It is one of those things that gets harder and harder to learn as you age. I am so set on learning to play the violin, at age 33, that I can’t possibly fit in learning any other language on top of that.
This is a love story of a different sort. Last year I discovered my love for the violin.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. From the moment I laid my hands on its body, I wanted to make beautiful music with it. I’d soon find out it wouldn’t be quite so simple as that.
I love everything about it, but it is the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted, to try and make anything resembling music with my hands, a bow, and four strings. There’s so much more to the violin than I ever imagined.
Angle. Pressure and weight. Force. Technique.
Most times I can get a decent sound from it, if I don’t think too hard, but that’s the trick. I work at just feeling the music, letting it flow through me, but there’s something missing.
If it were easy, I’d be better by this time, one year and counting. If it were so simple, I’d have gotten farther by this point. If I didn’t adore the violin, I’d have taken the easy way out and given up by now, saving myself the pain and frustration.
You don’t make it easy to love you, but I do. After all, some things can’t be explained. Love. When you know something is right, you just know.
***This is my first year of joining the A to Z Challenge and so I’ve decided to post randomly, as a way for new visitors to my blog to get to know me a little better. I look forward to discovering some interesting new blogs too.
“There, sitting on the warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the deer, the lion and every other creature finds food and shelter. As my knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in. Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister’s hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature and made me feel that ‘birds and flowers and I were happy peers.”
—Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
I’m trying to have the sense to live in the moment and to enjoy myself in that moment, whatever it might be, like Helen Keller and her teacher Miss Sullivan.
I am thankful for more time spent, just myself and my little buddy Mya.
She didn’t want to sleep the entire time. She didn’t want to miss one second of her time with Auntie Kerry.
Then Kim told me there are a few photos recently taken where Mya looks like me. I may never have my own children. My sister will never know how much this small thing, one I won’t ever likely fully understand because I can’t see the pictures, means to me anyway.
I am thankful for my last violin lesson for a few weeks.
Last time we missed multiple weeks it was I who was going away. This time my teacher is traveling.
I hope, like last time, I don’t fall too far back in my progress.
I hope her trip is everything mine was to me, all she hopes.
I am thankful for my return to the library.
I haven’t been to my writing group (The Elsewhere Region like I like to refer to it) since February, for a few reasons.
Everyone there seemed pleased to see me, a few even saying they missed me. I missed them and their wonderful imaginations.
We had little scraps of paper with a few lines of story prompt written on them, thanks to one of the members of our group, and mine included: a frog prince, a talking donkey, a cloud castle, and Betty’s wish list.
Who is Betty you ask…well I asked myself that same question. It was the first try for me, in a while or at all really, at writing fantasy. I liked what I came up with, though I have no idea where I was headed with it, but then my equipment decided to cause a problem.
I was reading my story in progress out loud to the group, they were riveted, and then the second half of what I’d written seemed to vanish. I am sure I wrote it, but my technology doesn’t always cooperate.
I am thankful I could answer a few questions about how I’ve learned and lived as a blind person, for a good cause.
My sister’s sister-in-law works with a young boy who is blind. She helps him in his neighbourhood school, but she had some questions about how I’ve grown up, how I learned, and how my mom saw it all from the parent perspective.
She had the coolest keychain on her keys. Instead of a cube with coloured squares, she has three blocks that move from one side to another, and they contain tactile dots. They are braille dots and they make different letters in braille when you mix and match them.
A fun thing to do with your hands. She sounds like an excellent teacher who wants to keep learning the best possible ways to teach her student to be as successful in his life as possible and it seems he is lucky to have her.
I am thankful for a friend reaching out, mentioning me to her friend, and a new and possible connection made in the world of women writing and women’s storytelling.
Thank you Lizzi. Women helping and supporting other women. We can always use the help. I appreciate it.
Who knows what will or will not come of it, but that is what making connections is all about.
I am thankful for a lovely first visit with my new neighbour in my home.
We had a nice talk. Many more to come.
She even warned me about the roofers coming to her house and called me this evening, to check on me, when she thought she heard a noise over here.
I am thankful for this earth.
I watched Bill Maher say that 45 needs to forget “Make America Great Again” and instead “Make Earth Great Again.”
I totally agree. Mars is cool and everything (says this fan of planets since childhood) but we don’t have licence to be careless, reckless, and destroy this planet, just because some want to get there. It is not the answer to our problems of environmental and climate changes. Taking care of this place, the one already with plenty of water and life and the air we breathe, that will benefit us all in the end.
As many said, every day should be Earth Day for us all.
I thank all the scientists in my life: my oldest friend, my many excellent doctors over the years, my cousin and his wife, my new friend who is also a writer, Bill Nye The Science Guy (for teaching me to love our solar system when I was a child), and to so many who are much smarter than I am in these matters.
I owe science big and I believe those who marched all around the world were warranted in doing so. We need to make a statement. Science is worth fighting for.
I am thankful for another excellent episode of Anne The Series.
A young girl runs through a dark, snow covered forrest, carrying a lantern and wearing only a thin layer of night clothes.
Ahead By A Century.
I am glad Anne and Diana are allowed to be friends again so soon, but I didn’t expect these three things to happen, all in this one episode of Anne The Series: Diana’s sister almost dying, Anne meeting Great Aunt Miss Josephine Barry, and Gilbert suffering a huge loss.
The fist fight is one of the memorable parts of this one, likely brought on by grief and a need to defend a newly growing love and respect, even if the source of that love and respect doesn’t make it easy, like one before her.
Though Anne is conflicted about what her future should be, between romance that most young girls are desperate for and her strong ambition, she knows when she listens to her heart.
This episode is all about letters, long lost pleas that will now never be addressed and unfinished business and apologies.
More flashback with Marilla this time, as a young girl, about Anne’s age. Sadly, youth cannot last and family obligations altered everything, but not necessarily for the worse, for some more than others.
Matthew offers to help Gilbert, Marilla and Gilbert have a enlightening conversation about place and time, and Anne finds a kindred spirit in old Miss Barry, who the writing hints as having had a long same sex relationship with another woman. This was never even alluded to in the series I loved growing up, but the times are changing and I am glad for that. It was one of the pleasant surprises of this week’s instalment.
Some of my favourite themes explored in this narrative are those exploring grief, loss, stubbornness, regret, and how decisions can or may influence the future.
Anne goes to give her apology when she finds an abandoned house, Marilla is stuck with her regrets, and Matthew goes to the bank to make some mysterious financial transaction.
Season finale already next Sunday. That went fast and I hope the break isn’t too long, that a second season is in the works.
“Romance is a pesky business. No sense to be made of it.”
—Miss Josephine Barry
I am thankful for books, but not only them, but books in accessible formats.
On World Book Day, I am not just thankful for books, though I am always thankful for those. It’s being able to read them, hold them, learn from them, and to access them in either e-format, audiobooks, or in braille.
This wasn’t always possible if you couldn’t see to read and it still isn’t always made easy. I just want to be like Helen, with her love of reading and learning. Or Anne and hers.
And so one more week ends and another begins. It’s all still an endless, giant enigma to me.
Her Headache 