Notebook

Personal Magnetism

The story goes that an iron stone had sat on a hill at “Iron Creek” Alberta from time immemorial. As long as it was left there, the local Cree and Blackfoot nations prospered. Hunters placed offerings of beads and knifes at its foot before they set out, and shamans brought patients to it to benefit [...]

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Notes on Literacy

1. When I was coming back on the plane from Nova Scotia several weeks ago, I read Paul Coelho’s “The Alchemist” which I’d picked up during a brief stop-over in Toronto. The bookstore salesperson, trying to help me find something to read in three minutes, kept pointing me towards books I really wasn’t interested in, [...]

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Driftwood Valley

Christmas in our family was a long drawn-out, messy, exuberant, exhausting, and generally wonderful affair. My high-octane, beautiful, high-achieving mother, who suffered severely from gult at not being a stay-at-home-mum like her sisters-in-laws and church acquaintances and friends, began her Christmas preparations on Remembrance Day. My brother and I, primed for work the night before, [...]

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Not Writing in Spain

By the beginning of June, my daughter, Xan, is ill with gastroenteritis and tonsillitis. Too many times I’ve had to call the English speaking Dr. Brioso to the flat on Avenida Ciudad de Ronda. He brings her sweets and tells me to give her coca-cola—anything to get her to eat and drink. Nothing he does [...]

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