Blog # 163...March 2025
Last month I posted a photo of bill bissett and Mary Simon, overlooking that readers outside Canada (even some inside) didn't know who she was. I corrected it quickly, but if you 've been wondering, she is of course our lovely indigenous Governor General...masked because she's suffering a cold.
In these times of sturm and drang, it's interesting to see what I'm doing, sometimes unconsciously, to keep my head above water. I realized recently that, although I'd never been a reader of biographies, I had in fact read a bunch in the past couple of years. Samantha Power was the first, followed by Michael J Fox, Mathew Perry, both Obamas, George Soros, Penelope Lively, Mike Nichols, Murray Sinclair, Candace Bergen, Barbra Streisand and most recently Jimmy Carter...whew!
I think I find it comforting to slide into another life for a while to feel more at ease in the world we share. In A Fine Balance, one of Rohinton Mistry's characters says "One day you must tell me your full and complete story...because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward without fear in this ever changing world."
Stories can be dramatic - like the years Michael J Fox has spent adapting his life to the challenges and limitations of Parkinson's Disease while remaining in the public eye. Or they can be simply human like Jimmy Carter's beginnings on a farm in Georgia... actually most of the childhoods I read about were pretty unremarkable.
One of the popular pastimes these days, along with being mindful and playing pickleball, is journaling. Capturing and reflecting on your own life in your own words can help make sense of it, I guess... also get rid of all those saved diaries, notes, drafts and other remainders and reminders of time spent.
Like many, maybe most, of you, I'm trying to put some order on the remainders/reminders without much success. Maybe putting it in words will trick me into action. There's always something more interesting to do, like read another of Lisa Genova's books - she writes novels from her background as a neuroscientist.
Early onset Alzheimer's in Still Alice was her first, successfully made into an Oscar winning film. She's gone on to introduce and humanize head injuries, autism, Huntington's Disease and now mood disorders, through fictional stories. I'm working my wat through all of them and finding them a much more compelling way to spend time than sorting through papers! Although the stories she tells are of lives totally different to mine, she has the wonderful talent of true storytellers to make me feel part of them. Like Dickens takes me to 19th century England while I read David Copperfield.
We'll be celebrating International Women's Day this month with a look at a Toronto initiative helping some of the most vulnerable people living marginally at home or on the streets of our city. One of many reasons to hang on to hope for the future, How how many you can think of in your life?
We'll be singing with Al Jolson by the time you're reading this blog, so "keep on looking for that bluebird and listening for its song, whenever April Showers come along."
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