We are the stronghold

 I was married to this guy from Winnipeg’s north end. His dad was a white guy, a trucker with big personality and a bigger anger management/drinking problem. His mom Joann was Metis, a “Roy”, five foot nothing, warm and golden as a pool of melted butter. She loved the grandchildren that her son and I…

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Orca Soundings

Talk given at opening of “Against the Current” exhibit, 2020 Salt Spring Arts Council Call me Ishmael.  Moby Dick is a book that presents one of the most pure villains in literature: Ahab, the captain of the doomed whaling ship  the Peqod,  embodies the Man vs. Nature domination trip that has resulted in our Current…

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Familiar, strange

Part of the draw of travelling is not-belonging. I’ve stepped away from the warm embrace of Salt Spring –  a place so familiar it’s mapped like the lines in my own hand.  This morning put the ‘travail’ in travel; feeling lost myself, lonely, acutely strange in the roaring tumult of Mexico City, taking it all…

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Relent

Scare the slow down And exhale Let the flakes settle to the bottom of the snow globe That is your new habitat. Take your full-throttle, lean-in, game-on overdriven  break-neckery and  Flat out forget it. Breathe in:  How quiet it is How clean: When the slate gets a wipe and we notice the rhythm that runs…

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