Blog # 151…March 2024
To go back to February for a moment, I’m happy to see Jen Gunter’s book Blood jump to # 1 on the non fiction best seller list. And I forgot to mention an interesting find at the McMichael…a wall of paintings by Frederick Banting, that’s right one of the founders of insulin. Science and art together again!
In December, I wrote about Medical Assistance in Dying. It's front and centre in the news again with the controversial issue of an extension to include intractable mental illness. In January I mentioned Good Grief, a film about the death of a loved one. And I wrote a piece on death for Moods Magazine in 2011 which began “When we’re born we’re issued with a return ticket” and went on to list the ways we avoid saying die or death…passing on, kicking the bucket or, for sports fans, the final inning. I’m starting to rest my eyes sometimes with audiobooks and just finished listening to Foregone, Russell Banks' final novel, the protagonist a dying man. Banks died in January 2023 and the book came out later last year. It's the first of his book's I've read (although I remember Atom Egoyan's film made from The Sweet Hereafter) but it won't be the last! Not that I’m preoccupied with death exactly but I am trying to desensitize myself to the thought as I move through life.
International Women's Day is coming up on March 8, we'll be celebrating online again so we can reach many people far away. Sorry to miss the tasty dishes we used to share but hope everyone can enjoy some yummy food and maybe get together with a few friends in your own corner. On Zoom here in the studio (my kitchen) we'll have Mary Newberry in conversation with BettyAnn Mckenzie about the book she edited on disability activist Beryl Potter, followed by Maria Meindl talking about her experience with Heart to Heart, an agency that brings groups of Israeli and Palestinian teens for a week of summer camping together in Ontario. I'll be sending some loving and supportive thoughts to Yulia Navalnaya who is bravely taking up her late husband's work, feel free to join me.
And while we're in that part of the world, there's a new book out about the amazing Volodymyr Zelenskyy who said, when someone compared him toWinston Churchill, that he felt more like, Charlie Chaplin. Reminding us of how Chaplin used the power of his art to demean fascism...both Zelenskyy and Navalny bring tears to my eyes with their humour and their bravery.
So Happy Birthday to any of you who are Leap Year people and we're moving towards spring, see you again in April.
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