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There is not one traffic light in any town north of Campbell River. 1. Don't be in a rush. Everything takes time. Everyone has time. You have time, too. You might have to wait while people finish chatting. No matter. You have time. 2. Don't try to make plans. People stop by. They want you to stop by. Or you can wait for them to come 'round. They will. 3. Don't be too picky. Everything you need is here. It might not be exactly what you had in mind, but does the difference really matter? If it does, there's the internet, and you can wait. But generally you have a few choices. That's enough. 4. Don't say too much. People will ask. They are genuinely interested. Share a story. They will genuinely appreciate it. No need to go on at length. A short story will do. Don't say more than you want to, because whatever you say, everyone will know. 5. Don't talk about other people. Everyone knows each other. * * * * The small-town norm that is most divergent with

At Your Library: What Should Your Child Read? "All my son wants to read are comics!" "I don't approve of those zombie or vampire books. Kids should read something more uplifting and educational." "Do comic books count as reading?" "My daughter reads those 'world record' books. I want her to read nice stories." At the library, we hear these questions all the time from parents and caregivers asking about their children's reading habits. Maybe you are a parent or grandparent who finds choosing reading material for your child difficult, confusing, or overwhelming. We're here to help. If the question is "What should my child read?", the short answer is: what they like . If your child enjoys what they're reading, they will read more – and reading more is what we want. It almost doesn't matter what they read, as long as they enjoy it. Of course, we want books to be appropriate for a child's age. There's a ri

We are buying a house! The list of things we said we'd never do is really beginning to pile up! An SUV, a third dog, and now this. All our lives -- until now -- renting was the only thing that made sense. The price of real estate in NYC and the Toronto area is nuts. Purchasing a home would have meant tripling (or more) our monthly housing costs, or having a two-hour (each way) commute, or buying a condo. None of those options were appealing. We also didn't want the responsibility of home ownership. We simply didn't care about owning. But the landscape has changed. We live in a place where homes are affordable, and where the tenancy laws for families with animals make renting very insecure. We have moved too many times in the last 10 years, and as we plan for our older age, this gives us more security. We originally thought we'd purchase the house we're renting, thinking the selling price would be low enough that we could renovate. Fortunately the owner wasn't in

This action photography is brought to you by  Allan . Don't worry, we are not neglecting Diego. I just didn't have any good shots of him, and I wanted to get this post up. Kai and Cookie are little devils. Kai has gotten out of the yard three times in the last four days. One minute she's in the yard, and then she's in the street. We've got ourselves a jumper. We haven't seen her do it, but it's the only way out. We're working on it. We've known that new dogs learn from the rest of the pack. But we didn't expect it to work the other way! Cookie is not fully housetrained. Kai saw this and thought, Hey, I didn't know we were allowed to do that in here! Cool! Yup. Multiple gifts from multiple dogs. Yesterday Cookie was running around with one of my shoes -- holding the very tip of the shoelace in her mouth with the shoe dangling just above the floor. She thought dancing away from Mommy was a great game. That was after Kai helped her steal and eat

Tl;dr? Learn about the National Network of Abortion Funds , and give generously. * * * * Right-thinking Americans and Canadians are reeling at extreme anti-abortion laws sweeping through at least a dozen states: Alabama, Missouri, and Georgia, are the worst offenders, but Ohio, North Dakota, Kentucky, Mississippi, Iowa, and others are not far behind. Most of these laws are blatantly unconstitutional, and are designed to force SCOTUS to overturn with  Roe v. Wade . These latest lethal weapons are the logical progression of the War on Women that's been going on for at least 30 years. Democrats and most liberal Americans sat idly by while anti-abortion-rights forces took over one state legislature after the next, setting up obstacle after obstacle designed to prevent access to safe, legal abortion, thereby limiting the human rights of great swaths of American women. While all anyone could talk about was Roe v. Wade , that poorly-written law became irrelevant for millions of women. Ame

Hejira , 1976 Front Cover Photo by Norman Seeff; Frozen lake by Wisconsin. Hejira snuck up on me. I heard it was "wordy," "cold," and "cerebral" and that the music was "abstract". I didn't know what that meant, but it didn't seem good. On the radio station I listened to as a teenager, one of the last holdouts of independent rock radio, "Song for Sharon" had heavy rotation. That's no surprise, as it's a thoroughly New York City song. I would hear it in the background, when I was driving or doing homework, and catch bits of lyrics: Staten Island, skyline, Bleecker Street, " eighteen bucks went up in smoke ". Then there was a video. No idea how or where I saw that, as MTV was still several years in the future, but the video of "Amelia" caught my imagination. Amelia Earhart is a lifelong fascination of mine; even at that age, I had a crush on her. Now it seemed that Joni, fascination numero uno, was also

When we moved to Port Hardy, I was sure that none of our Ontario friends would ever visit. It's so far away, and not an easy place to travel to. I was so happy to be wrong! Two sets of close friends have reason to be in Vancouver this year, and are adding on some Vancouver Island vacation, including staying with us for a few days. This makes me so happy! Our friends M@ and sM were here this past week. The timing was a bit mad -- our first days with the full pack of five -- but it was also very fortuitous. Having extra hands-on help with the dogs, and extra eyes with dog experience, definitely helped us over a few speed bumps. San Josef Bay, Holberg, and the Scarlet Ibis pub We took our friends on a  drive/hike to San Josef Bay . As long as visitors want to bother, I'll never get tired of this (although Allan is already tired of it). The road didn't seem quite as long and grueling this time, the hike is brilliant, and the beach is heavenly. If we don't want the hike, we

When we moved to Port Hardy, I was sure that none of our Ontario friends would ever visit. It's so far away, and not an easy place to travel to. I was so happy to be wrong! Two sets of close friends have reason to be in Vancouver this year, and are adding on some Vancouver Island vacation, including staying with us for a few days. This makes me so happy! Our friends M@ and sM were here this past week. The timing was a bit mad -- our first days with the full pack of five -- but it was also very fortuitous. Having extra hands-on help with the dogs, and extra eyes with dog experience, definitely helped us over a few speed bumps. San Josef Bay, Holberg, and the Scarlet Ibis pub We took our friends on a  drive/hike to San Josef Bay . As long as visitors want to bother, I'll never get tired of this (although Allan is already tired of it). The road didn't seem quite as long and grueling this time, the hike is brilliant, and the beach is heavenly. If we don't want the hike, we

Under a plastic chair: Cookie's safe space It's tough to get a photo of Kai without a toy in her mouth. I thought it would be difficult to get Cookie enough exercise...

Thank you Alex Cora, Mookie Betts, David Price, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Jackie Bradley Jr., Hector Velázquez, Christian Vázquez, Eduardo Núñez, and Sandy Leon! These nine players and their manager declined to attend the White House visit purporting to honour the 2018 championship team. The Trump White House could not be bothered to spell the team's name correctly or name the actual sporting event that the team won. The World Series is the oldest professional team sports event in the United States, having been played since 1903. (The Kentucky Derby is older. Hopefully all the horses know that Trump's policies constitute a war on animals , and also boycott the visit.) Earlier this year, the Golden State Warriors (NBA) expressed doubts about a White House visit, and the invitation was withdrawn. Ditto for the Philadelphia Eagles (NFL) after they won the 2018 Super Bowl. However, this silly headline , implying this is "nothing new", is false. Various individual p

I fell in love with Cookie the first time I saw her outside the library. I knew her current people wouldn't keep her. Yada yada yada, today she joined our pack. Cookie is a tiny slip of a thing, smaller than Kai, and very skinny. She has not had a lick of training. We haven't had a dog starting at square one in a long time! I have no doubt that with patience, consistency, and the example of her packmates, she'll come along very quickly. We took her home this morning, first stopping at an empty ballfield to do a bit of recall training and bonding, and to burn off some energy. She did great on the recall, until she didn't, happily trotting away to say hello to a group of students. One of the girls grabbed her leash. Diego was very happy to meet Cookie. Kai was very serious about demonstrating her dominance, but Cookie showed no aggression. We had no idea how Kai would react, so this was nice to see. Cookie was frightened and cowering while Diego and Kai inspected her. She

Time to change things up. I've (finally) gotten tired of my silly movie award categories , and need a change. I decided to go with a conventional one-to-five rating scale. But I wanted to use a good symbol, something other than stars (too common), thumbs-up (too cliched) or a maple leaf (too patriotic). I'm using a symbol that's very meaningful to me. (To be honest, it was between ☮ and this , but I could only get the peace sign to work in Blogger.) Here are the movies and series I watched between the end of the 2018 World Series and 2019 Opening Day, alphabetically, rated on a scale of five. 45 Years ☮☮☮ This drama featured truly great acting, and a certain amount of tension. Ultimately, though, I didn't buy the premise. Would a lifetime marriage really founder on a revelation about feelings that occurred before the couple even met? It strained credulity. 8th Grade ☮☮☮☮ This movie perfectly captured what it feels like to be in 8th grade and an outsider, struggling to s

Diego seems to be doing all right. He's able to hobble around on three legs pretty well. The incision looks good, and so far he's leaving it alone, so we don't have to make him even more uncomfortable by putting a giant cone around his giant head. I say he seems to be all right because he's so quiet and sad. He can stand on three legs to eat his food, and he hobbles around the yard on-leash, but getting from standing up to lying down is a nightmare. It can take him 30 or 45 minutes to figure out how to lie down, or perhaps to get up the courage to try, because it's clearly painful. When he finally exhausts himself standing, he lies down with obvious difficulty. He's got two patches of pain meds on one side of his body, and we have extra pain meds along with antiobiotics that we're giving him around the clock. But I'm not sure it's enough. The vet sent us home with instructions for physio. The program should begin with "1, quit job"! There

The " wmtc's greatest hits " page is now updated to include 2018. Somehow Allan continues to find highlights.

The surgery was a success. The vet was very pleased with how the procedure went, said the joint is in good shape outside of this injury, and Diego did well with the anesthesia. He's currently sleeping it off and we're picking him up shortly. Whew! Thank you for your good wishes, my friends.