What was Beautiful:
All this wintry sunshine. It’s my favourite weather and I wish I had more time to just soak it all up.
Dinner at Anna Lena in Vancouver. Amazing spread and seriously good service.
What made me Laugh:
Going through my grandmother’s brooch collection with my sister.
What I’ve been up to:
Art class – and actually making some art at home too!, running up and down I-5 to go diving / dining / visiting / snowbaording, etc., and trying to get the yard to look like less of a disaster before the tulips come up. Also what feels like a lot of Work.
What I’m reading:
Portraits of Retired Sex Workers: The Gaze Turned the Other Way – an utterly amazing photo essay at Medium
Another, also involving the elderly – You & Me on a Sunny Day
The secret lives of Narwhals, because duh. Who doesn’t want to know what the unicorns of the sea are up to?
New Poetry by Indigenous Women. I’ve been on a super poetry bent lately and was grateful to come across this.
A request for “fun facts” about me prompted a Google search for Canadians and “Degan” and returned these gems:
36 Delightful facts about Canada, Weird Facts about Canada that prove it’s the Most Interesting Country Ever (did you know we eat 55% more Kraft Dinner than Americans do? That must be in the prairies. Or all those communities that are too far away from grocery stores), Urban Dictionary entries for Degan that suggest my name means, “to put hos before bros; to ditch friends to be with a girlfriend” or “A fucking idiot who copies people’s words and drives an accord”. Ouch! At least I am from the most interesting country ever and I know that Accord should be capitalized.
Icicle Creek, a poem by EJ Koh (along with many other poems a friend sent me in response to a request for new poetry recommendations).
The Gift & Power of Emotional Courage, at TEDx. I’m always going to click that link and this is a good one.
Rebecca Solnit on the #MeToo Backlash. I deeply respect her thinking and writing and this is a subject that I can’t let go of yet either.
What Cross-country Skiing Reveals About the Human Condition…timely because of the Olympics but relevant to me because poetic. Via Nicole Gulatta, a poet, and it is indeed poetic, “Every winter sport is — in addition to being an inspiring triumph of elegant majesty — also a total hassle. It is not easy to convert your soft, frail, squishy, warm human body into something that can survive in the hard world of frozen water. It requires all kinds of logistics: fitting, strapping, buckling, bundling, clomping, shivering. But the effort is worth it, because the frozen water unlocks superpowers we would never otherwise have. It allows us to glide, slide, soar, whoosh and hurtle. Skiers go flying over moguls at 75 m.p.h. Speedskaters shoot over the ice, leaning and pumping, weaving through competitors. The payoff for the ridiculous logistical nightmare is the gift of fluid speed.”
Does Marriage Even Make Sense Anymore? at Medium. “People marry to show their family and friends how well their lives are going, even if deep down they are unsure whether their partnership will last a lifetime.” “This (often illusionary) feeling of security is enhanced by the legal binding of one to another. It makes it more difficult to leave, and thereby relates to possessing. In short, we want to marry so we can hold onto another.”
Comfort is a Silent Killer, linked from the article above.
8 Things Everyone Should Do Before 8 AM. I hate titles that tell me what to do but this does make sense. Wake up, get in the zone, get moving, put the right food in your body, get ready, get inspired, get perspective, do something to move you foreward.
Are we post lifestyle? at Medium. “The alpha and omega of modern advertising is that we want to be the person with the thing pictured more than we want the thing.”
