I am always fascinated by stories of personal transformation. How does anyone achieve redemption, wisdom, grace and meaning after experiencing or witnessing prolonged suffering? I’m especially interested when those stories come from caregivers. Steve Litwer is a volunteer guitarist for patients in hospice care. His book, The Music Between
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Scripturient: The Long Read Lost
“What we read, how we read, and why we read change how we think, changes that are continuing now at a faster pace,” wrote Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist, in her book, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in the Digital World (Harper Paperbacks, 2019). It’s the sequel to her previous
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: Mining for Truth and Meaning in Caregiving and Memory
My sister Karen Thomson painted this portrait of our Mom and she titled it Partly Who She Was. Karen painted this from a photo that we took of Mom just as she got out of the car at Hovey Manor, a lovely country hotel in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Our Collective Memory Lasts Thousands of Years
When European explorers made first contact with peoples around the world both cultures changed. Unfortunately for those being contacted they were changed by a lot of diseases and exploitation (sadly the exploitation continues to this day). Europeans also ignored the long history of the peoples they met and devalued their
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: A Remarkable Story of Banishing Grief After Loss
KarolinaJonderko is a Polish photographer who nursed her beloved mother throughout a frightful journey to end with cancer. After her mother died, Jonderko realized that she’d forgotten all the happy memories of family life before cancer. So she took a remarkable decision. Jonderko decided to photograph herself wearing her mother’s
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Lest we Forget #nlpoli
More people will pay attention to Remembrance Day this year than usually might. The murder a few weeks ago of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, and to a lesser extent, the murder of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, are enough to remind a few more of the memorial day for those who have
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Dave Clark Five
We’re sitting on the front deck listening to British Sixties Radio, an internet radio station we like and listen to a lot, and they just played the Dave Clark Five doing Glad All Over. That song came out on the UK charts in January, 1964, reaching North America a bit
Continue readingcartoon life: Do I have too many apps?
This iPad has been displaying some odd problems with apps crashing, it seems, when they try to access memory, for instance Sketches app when saving, ScannerPro just after it takes the picture, when it frames it up. Paper too, when browsing through books of drawings. I’ve been dropping into the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Remembering Tiananmen Square
25 years ago in Tiananmen Square there was a protest against the Chinese government. The protest was dealt with lethal force by the government – killing many people. Since then, the Chinese government has blocked any discussion about the protest and has greatly censored information on it. Obviously all of
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM - A Blog by Donna Thomson: Thanksgiving 2013
This is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. It’s early Saturday morning now and I’m packing groceries from the fridge into shopping bags to bring to our cottage in the mountains. Everyone in our extended family is there already. Except Nicholas and my Mum, of course. Yesterday I visited Nick in
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM - A Blog by Donna Thomson: A Day To Remember… Always
Yesterday was a day that I will always remember. Nicholas came up north to our family cottage for the afternoon! It has been seven years since was last here and we were all unsure whether he could withstand the pain of such a long (two hour) journey each way. Let
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Reading, Writing and Memory
“Memory,” he read the headline as he settled into the armchair, resting his elbows on the wide arms to expand the National Post paper to its fullest, “declines much slower in people who read, write throughout life.” Ah. Interesting. He … Continue reading →
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: In your FACE, Proust!
Though I’m not sure the cartoon below has the elegance of the madeleine episode from The Remembrance of Lost Time (the first volume of which I’ve actually read), this cartoon below wins on brevity. If you want to save yourself … Continue reading →
Continue readingcalgaryliberal.com: Alberta Liberal and Federal Liberal Cooperation? Lets Go.
I was talking to one of my friends around the the university the other day and I brought up Raj Sherman’s interview in the Calgary Herald on some form of cooperation between the two Liberal parties in Alberta. It was an off-hand comment and I didn’t really expect a conversation
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Aging Nostalgia
This chart imparts two important points to me: I am older than the average American I had no idea the movie Forrest Gump was so important. The list is marginally less depressing than a game a co-worker of mine used … Continue reading →
Continue readingLeft Over: Quebec Should Stop Apologising For Speaking Truth to Power…
I am really, really tired of Jewish organizations condemning everyone and everything as it relates to the ironic use of fascist salutes, arguments and rebuttals..Like it or not, the term ‘Nazi’ and the salute made so famous by Hitler’s sheeple has become part of the lexicon..and there isn’t much anyone
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