Goodness52

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies." My daughter Holly polished off the Game of Thrones books when she was in Grade 8, so she knows about book bingeing. I have yet to crack that series, but I get what author George R. R. Martin means about living a thousand lives. So, with a mittful of Christmas holidays at my disposal, I decided to spend a week adding seven lives in seven days. Of course, I don't think any human could devour seven whole books in that time, so I read the first chapter of each one instead. Calgary's fantastic new public library The week started in Calgary, where our family cozied up in a condo across the alley from the fantastic new public library. It's been raved about by the New York Times , and is now considered one of the world's greatest public spaces. Oh, and it also has books. Because I've been heavying up on non-fiction over the past few years, I really wanted to get the flavour of seven different voices to...

"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." Kahlil Gibran, who you might be surprised to learn is the 3rd best selling poet of all time (after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu) has been a guiding light for me ever since I read The Prophet as a teenager. His words about giving are especially wise during the holiday season, with commercialism raging all around us. So, hot on the heels of a week in which I spent nothing, I decided to give a bunch of stuff away. And sure enough, it did bring me joy. A year ago, Val and I moved from our large Calgary bungalow to a small two-bedroom condo in Victoria. Along the way, we parted with about a third of everything we owned. That included an unforgettable "garage sale" day when everything was marked either $1 or FREE. It was amazing to see how many people went straight for the things marked FREE, even though the much nicer wares were sitting a few feet away at only a buck a piece. Lesson learned: people li...

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." As colorful as you might find that rascal Oscar Wilde, the simple fact of his spendy lifestyle was that he ended up declaring bankruptcy, and selling off the rights to The Importance of Being Earnest . Even when he was at his poorest, Oscar found ways to keep us his collection of china and purchase an angora suit. Imaginative, yes, but the brilliant writer ended up having to part with it all. With that grim reminder, I decided to make the second week in December all about spending nothing. Okay, almost nothing. We still need to eat, so just to keep my bank statement at $0.00 for the week, I asked Val to do the grocery shopping. Other than that, I chopped my spending like a newly elected politician and became a financial monk for seven straight days. With Christmas shopping fever in full tilt, I discovered the joy of parking my credit card in its wallet sleeve while the madness raged all around ...

"If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." Red Green, that iconic TV handyman who could fix just about anything with a roll of duct tape, offers what is perhaps the best reason ever for Doing It Yourself. It's the ladies! As I placed an order for a garden shed and bravely said nyet to the $175 assembly charge, I was already picturing Val swooning into my arms having admired my manly handiwork. Beyond just engaging my inner cheapskate, venturing into Handyland also fires up my "little grey cells" and ignites my problem-solving abilities. So I started the week poring over a manual and then watching a YouTube video on how to level a space for a garden shed. I even read a great article on why DIY is good for you , beyond the obvious of saving money. Then off I went to Canadian Tire, walking out with a shovel, a level, a square and something I've always coveted in my toolbox - a rubber mallet. During the week, I cha...

"The world would be a better place if everyone was a birdwatcher." I wonder if the artist Robert Bateman knows just how popular birdwatching is these days. It may not be "everyone" but in one in five Canadians are now self-proclaimed birders. It's even soared past gardening in popularity. Naturally, I had to discover the joys of birdwatching for myself! Val and I are truly lucky in where we live. Just a few blocks from our front door in Esquimalt, we ambled down to a quiet marina, and immediately spotted a pair of mute swans drifting along as darkness approached. Maybe not as rare a spotting as the trumpeter swan with its all-black beak, but stirring just the same. It was enough to want to get out with the binoculars and get more serious. Next up was Esquimalt Lagoon, home of a migratory bird sanctuary that's been described as a birdwatcher's paradise. We went on a chilly but sunny day and were simply stunned at the variety and sheer numbers...

"For we were spinning out our lines walking on the wire. Hand in hand went music and the rhyme." When Bernie Taupin wrote those lines for Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy , he and Elton John were already looking back on a music-and-lyrics partnership that had launched them to stardom. They had caught lightning in a bottle, and it was magical. With that as inspiration, I decided to spend a week trying to make a song, with my son Nic as the music and me as the rhyme. So...what to write about? The idea came during a text exchange with Nic. I mentioned that Barrow, Alaska had just seen its last sunset of the decade (on November 19!) and he replied that apparently, the sun does set on the American Empire. I asked if there was such a thing as the "American Empire" and we were on our way. After a few disappointing stabs at it, I had something that I thought was workable verse. Here it is: Wishing Hole We heard voices calling in the n...

"We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery." Putting pen to paper, as Charles Dickens explained so well in Great Expectations , is a comfortable activity. The second you make contact with the paper, you feel a soulful journey beginning. And so, for a week, I did just that, but in a fancy way. Since I already know how to write, I decided to try my hand at something a little more elevated and challenging. Hello, calligraphy! The first thing I learned while exploring the countless YouTube videos available on the subject, is that calligraphy is not handwriting. It is lettering. Rather than attempt to connect all your letters with a continuous line, the goal is to give each letter its own character, and that means frequently lifting your pen off the paper and moving to your next starting point. The next thing I learned was about upstroke...