It’s Visual Art for Day 3 of the Artist Challenge! I’m going to bend the art-as-bread metaphor a bit, and say that visual art… is a sandwich. Because it has to be. You take your deliciously blank bread/canvas/hunk of rock, add your ideas and effort, colour and texture, and make it something totally new that’s…
Category: Raves – Why I Love
When I love something, I want you to know.
Such Outrageous (Good) Fortune
I mentioned I’ve been absent from school twice within the last two months, for a week at a time. There are only good reasons for this, and this is what I wrote (and didn’t manage to post) when I came back from the first one – a rare and wonderful reunion of my dad’s side…
#NaBloPoMo, Day 12: Teachers
I am what they call a “planning teacher,” which means I am always teaching the students from other people’s homerooms, when their regular classroom teacher is doing his or her planning. At the moment, I work with four different groups of students in Grades 4 to 6. This job means that I get a unique…
#NaBloPoMo, Day 3: Dance
Tonight, I’m grateful for dance. For the way it brings people together, in circles, squares, pairs, clumps, and huge crowds. For the catharsis of a solo soul-dance party with nobody watching. For the way it makes great music greater. For the rush of a great performance – for both dancers and spectators. For the beauty…
One Decade of Marriage
Dear Sean, It’s hard to believe that it has been ten whole years since the day we pledged ourselves to each other as husband and wife. A decade sounds long, but feels short these days. On the other hand, ten years is short, in a way, since our story began long before that. It has been…
Neil Patrick Harris: Autobiography vs. Oscar Gig
I’m guessing I will never be one of those timely Oscar bloggers who gets herself syndicated on BlogHer by being the first aficionado to comment knowledgeably on the ill-advised green-card joke by Sean Penn, or the facial hair on Matthew McConaughey, or the prevalence of baby pink amongst red carpet finery. Predictably, life got in the…
100 Happy Days – Day 28: THE SHOW
What a night. It was the kind of dance performance experience you hope for: Everything went smoothly – no obvious costume mishaps, lighting and music cues were all on, people did their jobs well. We had an almost-full theatre. Our guest performers were all amazing. We got great feedback from our audience (even some of…
100 Happy Days – Day 25: Black Lentils
I’ll be honest. This day was a hectic, somewhat crappy day. One of those days when my kids are simultaneously screaming before 8:30 a.m.; also, one of those days when I asked myself, “Why did I become a teacher again?” Sigh. BUT. There was this bag of mysterious legumes I’d accidentally bought months ago, thinking they were…
100 Happy Days – Day 24: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
Our pie pumpkin was frozen on the doorstep after the first snows. Time to toast seeds! I followed this advice for getting them plump and salty, and then golden-brown. MMMMMmmmmm! SO TASTY. (Plus: antioxidants, mineral nutrients – especially zinc, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties.) *** [ad name=”Med Rec”] ***
Thanks To The Gunman
To the gunman who bloodied Parliament Hill yesterday: thank you for making a statement. Actually, you made several statements. But are they the ones you meant to make? Whenever someone famously and violently takes a life, I wonder what brought the perpetrator to think that killing another human is the best option. What did you intend to accomplish?…