You know the old cliche, “If a book drops during a pandemic, does it make a sound?” Well the answer is yes, unfortunately the sound is more of a thud, rather than the bang an author would have hoped for. There’s been a lot of behavioral adjustments since COVID, and the ability to discover new…
Making Connections – Near and Far
During this strange, once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully!) ordeal, I find myself thinking about some of the experiences and interactions I have had during the pandemic, especially online. So much of the world has also been at home, and many of us turned to online activities and connected with each other via the Internet. These personal connections include…
The Flute Player and How He Grieved
Grief feels rather slippery when we try to grab and fix it. Elusive, changeable as a chameleon, and coming and going in its own rhythms, it's like the tides of an ocean. Thomas Golden in his book, Swallowed by A Snake, delivers a beautiful story that "going into grief may at times be like being…
Lizards and Robots and Aliens, Oh My!
Lizards and Robots and Aliens, Oh My! Non-binary Coded Characters in Sci-Fi When I heard that She-Ra and the Princesses would have a non-binary character played by non-binary actor Jacob Tobia in their next season, I was beyond excited. As a non-binary person, representation in the media is so rare that any time I get…
Of Poetry and Rivers: Langston Hughes, Denise Low, and Katherena Vermette
A Confluence of Writing on Rivers -- Part 1 in a Series About Writing with River Themes Rivers represent literal and symbolic change and transformation. I am dipping into a plethora of writing with river themes—reveling in reading which is immersed in waterways! To begin I am celebrating powerful and lyrical poetry. In this…
When Your Childhood Hero Fails You
I don't remember how old I was when I first read Harry Potter. One day, it's like this boy wizard magically appeared, with his scar on his forehead, ready to go on a new, thrilling, often terrifying adventure. Like most people of my generation, I grew up with this unexpected and often reluctant hero, and I…
How-To Festival, Quarantine Edition
After a surreal spring, this summer is shaping up to be Not Your Typical Summer. When everything began to shut down in March, we pondered the fate of this year’s How-To Festival: how do you plan an event meant to bring the community together, when most likely you need to keep everyone apart? We decided…
Recollections
Back in early March I had the good fortune of being first on the holds list for Recollections of My Nonexistence, the new memoir by Rebecca Solnit. My luck held -- I checked it out just before the quarantine, thus guaranteeing that I could keep it for months. (I’ve been infected by Ms. Solnit’s contagious…
In the Fog
There was a Soviet animation called “Hedgehog in the Fog” I saw when I was a kid. I hated it. The colors were dull, the plot made no sense, there was not much going on. The other day I realized that the cartoon closely reflects how I feel these days. The story is pretty straightforward…
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