Wednesday
September 7, 2005

Sick at Heart

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

I have not been writing.
All is well with us, it is not my own misfortune that has dampened my spirit. No, it is the incomprehensible behaviour I am observing around me that burdens my heart.

The devastation brought by hurricane Katrina to the southern states was heartbreaking. The human element that contributed to poor planning, and delayed relief, is very sad.

What I see are thousands upon thousands of greedy, self-interested, little decisions, falling like rain in North America, until they have accumulated into a flood of human misery.

Having said my peace, I feel I can go on.

journal entry

Today is sunny and warm. The humidity is high but not unbearable. The nights are cool, dissipating the heat of day before one retires for the night. The bugs are all but gone. The summer people have packed up their SUVs and headed back to the source of their wealth. The neighbourhood has subsided into its quiet autumn state.

Since the nights are cool these days, I am back to baking our bread. Our menus are becoming more varied as cooler weather allows comfortable use of the stovetop and the oven.

We are preparing for winter. Attila is splitting wood for use while he recovers from the surgery he needs this winter. He has accumulated enough split wood to keep us warm for about three weeks. Our little trailer has been cleaned, aired and steel wool has been used to block all the exterior openings in an attempt to keep the mice out during the winter months. We are purchasing our winter supply of flour, yeast, assorted grains and oil.

This is my favourite time of year. I grew up on a farm. Although harvest season meant long days spent in the fields and orchards, the exhaustion one experiences from such hard work and accomplishment has its own satisfactions.

We would come in from the fields to help with canning and freezing. By the end of November our root cellar was lined with brightly coloured jars of strawberries, cherries, plums, raspberries, pickles, relishes and jams. The large freezer was full to bursting freshly butchered beef and chickens from the farm, sometimes venison from my father's annual hunting trip, beans, peas, corn, carrots and any type of exotic vegetable my mother had tried in the garden that year. Bushels of apples, turnips and potatoes would be stacked high against the wall.

The only food we ate that came in plastic bags was margarine. It was white, and had a small capsule of colouring on the inside of the bag. It was the children's job to burst the capsule inside the bag and "knead" the sealed bag to distribute the colour evenly.

Things are so very different now.

When Luna was here with the dogs, as she watched me bake she asked why I broke each individual egg into a cup before adding it to the mixing bowl.

I replied, "To prevent a bad egg from spoiling the rest in the mixing bowl."

Luna replied by asking, "Have you ever had a bad egg?"

I had to think a minute.

"Why no, I don't believe I have ever bought a bad egg from the grocery store. But on the farm we sometimes found eggs that contained large blood spots, or had a partially formed chick in them. I guess I just never got out of the habit of watching for them."

The chasm between my life experience and that of my children is deep and wide.



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Weather
Time 5:00 P.M. EDT
Temp 27°C
Wind 13 km/hr  
Rel Humidity 48%
Pressure 102.16 kPa



Maggie Turner Personal Journal
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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