Climate Change

Today is the third day of rain since J. and I arrived in central Ontario. When we took Mowat for a walk this morning, we could smell mould on the forest floor, and up the street, the house on the corner is covered in overgrown ivy. It’s like a rain-forest here, compared to the dry […]

Earth For Sale

What I thought about yesterday morning, as I opened up the new package of dental floss with a special weave so it won’t break, is how so much of our human ingenuity and our diminishing energy supplies goes towards making new stuff that will appeal to the discriminating consumer. It was an echo of an […]

A Mixed Tape for Swarm

Despite the fact that my mother studied to be an opera singer in the 1960s, I’m not a very musical person. I mean, I make up silly songs about everything, especially our growing collection of animals, but I don’t listen to a lot of music. I write in silence because I find any sound pulls […]

Jam Jars

Somebody on Facebook said that there are robins in Toronto. Really? This is the time of year that totally screws me up. Edging s.l.ow.l.y out of winter down south when up here, the snow has yet to start slumping and this morning it was forty below with the windchill. Should I stop? But the weather […]

The Grim Reality

It’s grim, a friend said to me the other day. She didn’t mean it in a bad way. She’s a person who isn’t afraid of darkness in her fiction but, even still, I cringed a little bit. That’s nothing new. Since Swarm has been out I’ve found myself feeling a tad insecure about the austerity of the […]