“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — Virginia Woolf
I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which… Continue reading “to put presence into absence”: on the occasion of the 2019 Booker Prize Awarded to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo
Episodic watery visions. The soothing shores of Astotin Lake come into view as we emerge from time to time on our path through the woods. Imagine bees, berries, bison, beaver, birds and a poodle.
A September weekend: strolling through sunlight and the heat of summer returned. Two days and three nights unfold with the up and down flow of a rusty sun salutation.
What days - feasts of friendship, feminism and this. Sunday, 25 August It began with a brunch ...chez Sheena with her loving extended family. Xander grins when we stand back to back: Ha! surpassed the height of this petite doting auntie. After Ajay’s crispy bottomed eggs, (a specialty, observes Shanda,) and other treats, we visit… Continue reading 48 hours in a life unfold – a long read
Henry & Grizella Donnelly - Margaret Donnelly & Robert Shields - great great grandparents - my paternal grandmother's Irish and English lineage My paternal great great grandmother Margaret Donelly was a mystery to me. At twenty years of age in 1861, she lived with aging parents - her mother Grace or Grizella and father Henry… Continue reading Unsettling Relations: Margaret Donnelly (1841-1896)
No Gate No Lock 