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By Ms. G, July 13, 2021 1:48 pm

I’ve been reading, too.

I came to know David Chariandy’s work through his young adult novel, Brother. I recently re-read it with a reluctant reader in my credit recovery class. We both loved its sympathetic and blunt portrayals of characters and of the sting of racism within Toronto!

This little book is addressed to the Vancouver writer’s young daughter, who, like him, is of mixed heritage. He expands on his background, his parents from Trinidad, and experiences in Canada, visiting Trinidad, and around the world. Much like in Brother, he shares stories of culture and belonging. He writes of the challenges his daughter will face growing up in Canada, a country full of opportunity but also full of racism, classism and anti-feminism.

In one message to her, he implores:

“You did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world, daughter. You are neither solely nor uniquely responsible to fix them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others. Today, many years after indenture and especially slavery, there are many who continue to live painfully in wakes of historical violence. And there are current terrible circumstances whereby others, in the desperate hope for a better life, either migrate or are pushed across the hardened borders of nations and find themselves stranded in unwelcoming lands. We live in a time, dearest daughter, when the callous and ignorant in wealthy nations have made it their business to loudly proclaim who are the deserving “us” (those really “us”) and who are the alien and undeserving “them.” But the story of our origins offers us a different insight, The people we imagine most apart from “us” are, oftentimes, our own forgotten kin.”

Though published in 2018, the book is made even more relevant by the pandemic and its pushing open of Canada’s need to address its multifaceted problems. I highly recommend it for its brevity, lyrical writing and powerful message.

Next, I’m well into Barack Obama’s Promised Land.

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By Ms. G, July 12, 2021 9:45 am

Hopefully Ontario won’t screw things up and move too fast on re-opening. While I enjoy going out and into a few stores (as long as they are not crowded), I don’t want to take it for granted that Delta variant is out there and we are all still held hostage to it in a way.

So, my wishes are:

vaccination rates increase EVEN more

people get to see their family and friends (safely)

students read something NOT on a screen

the weather permits lots of outdoor gathering

everyone stays healthy and safe!!

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By Ms. G, May 11, 2021 5:12 pm

There’s more to animal videos than cats, apparently. Val shared this dancing cockatoo. But more importantly, there are two cockatoos. One seems to be embarrassed by the other. Sounds like how Shadow feels about Richard.

Have a watch for a smile. And keep your eye on the bird on the left (even though it’s hard to stop watching the adorable dancing bird).

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By Ms. G, April 24, 2021 7:58 am

Especially for my history students.

And Saturday is my Sudoku day:)

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By Ms. G, April 11, 2021 12:24 pm

Working outside in the backyard yesterday reminded me that all plants struggle to make it above ground, especially the ones in my super shady backyard full of aggressively digging squirrels.

We will make it through this third wave.

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By Ms. G, April 5, 2021 6:55 am

Sorry, virtual class. I meant to take a pic with Ms. K in front of the screen with you but my camera didn’t have a card in it!

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By Ms. G, March 21, 2021 3:00 pm

The author of this book, Melissa Gould, is my cousin. She was married to my cousin Joel, who died about eight years ago. Joel had MS and was struggling, but then he got West Nile Virus and could not be helped. He was 50 years old. Their daughter was only 13 at the time.

Melissa, who was a screenwriter for tv shows, recently wrote this memoir of her experiences with Joel and without Joel.

Getting through it was both hard and easy. I cried a lot to the point I had to put cucumber on my eyes to depuff them and stop them from stinging. But I also couldn’t put the book down and finished in a few hours Normally I am a slow reader. I just had to know how Melissa was going to figure life out without her beloved husband.

And she has.

As I often do upon finishing a book, I wrote to Melissa via her website. She was kind enough to answer and was pleased that I related some of my best memories of Joel.

Life is very precious and we must live every day in a meaningful way. Even during a pandemic. There’s nothing more to say than that.

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By Ms. G, March 4, 2021 9:19 pm

Our cat is a curious little man.

Perhaps if you like the sound of running water you’ll enjoy this.

My apologies to the earth for the wasted water – VAL was the photographer, not me.

Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.

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By Ms. G, February 1, 2021 7:44 pm

One thing I miss is browsing in my local bookstore, where I picked up this gem from 2016. I had read two books by Dava Sobel previously: A More Perfect Heaven, a play about Copernicus and his astronomical discoveries, and my all-time favourite book, Galileo’s Daughter. Students who’ve taken my grade 12 history class know how much I love Galileo – a colourful figure if ever there were one.

Continuing the sky-gazing theme, here Sobel tells the story of the women who worked at the Harvard Observatory from the mid-1800s up to the 1950s. At a time when few women could find professional places in the world of science, hundreds of women worked at Harvard cataloguing the stars via photometry – glass plate photos of the stars. And they didn’t all work in obscurity; many of them were highly notable at the time. No, they were not equals. They did not earn the same as their male peers, nor did they have as many opportunities. Yet, surprisingly, the environment for these women was relatively tolerant for the time. It was not a place of conflict or pettiness, at least according to Sobel’s telling.

That’s something, even for our own times. And thus I found the book equally calming and engaging at the same time. Sobel doesn’t make loud arguments. She paints a steady and intriguing picture through the details of the women’s lives. And astronomical observation is a very detailed field! though I read Scientific American, I admit to often skipping the articles on black holes and the like. We also subscribe to Sky News, the Canadian periodical. Usually I don’t spend much time on it. Now I feel more equipped to understand it a bit better. Hat’s off to Sobel for making the science of stellar observations seem so interesting and understandable.

Whenever I finish a book that I really enjoy, I check the author’s webpage to see if they have a “contact” section. Often I get no response. Not so with Dava Sobel. She replied to me very quickly:

Dear Risa,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful note and kindest comments about my work.

The Glass Universe was published right after the 2016 presidential election. A cousin close to me in age and temperament said the book gave her a calm place to escape to, so your remark really resonates. The people in that chapter of science history were genuinely respectful of one another. It was a pleasure to be with them over the years of research.

I so appreciate your affection for Galileo’s Daughter, which may be my favorite of the stories I’ve told. Certainly it stretched me in several directions. And I agree something of the convent spirit hovered about the observatory. Now I’m discovering it again in the Curie lab.

I’m happy for your students, as I can imagine the example you set for them..
Warm and grateful regards,

d.

Such a treat.

Reading brings such unexpected pleasures. I so look forward to Dava Sobel’s next book.