Estragon Supplement

We’re waiting for a storm, here in over-sensitive, whingey, smelling salts-requiring Toronto. Yes: there will be SNOW! Radar and every single local news station say so. And we prepare, mostly by gathering in each other’s cubicles and talking about how...

Ave atque vale, Ronald Watts

I struggled, before and during the writing of this. Ron didn’t want anyone except a chosen few to know about him. And yet I’m writing this. He’s dead, so I can. Hence the struggle. Part of this is selfishness, because this is a story I want to tell....

Raclette of Gratitude

Sometimes I complain about teaching. In fact, about three weeks into any given course, I tend to have a fair-to-middling-sized meltdown. I’m working 9 to 5; I’m critiquing 50 pages of student writing a week instead of writing my own stuff; my free time has...

Trees and hills I long have known

Once, long ago (in 2001), I saw the Shire for the first time. On-screen, it was exactly as I’d always pictured it in my head: verdant and rolling, suffused in golden-green light. And when Frodo leapt up from the foot of that perfect Shire tree, he looked right too. He...

Cream; no sugar

I’m having one of my patented meltdowns. It’s midway through one of my U of T terms, and I’m doing a lot of critiquing. Also, I’m now over a month into a new job, still feeling slightly unbalanced, certain I’ll screw up big-time, any day....