oldies but goodies

Another email to gladden my heart. I'll stop posting these now - my longterm students were teasing me last night about posting each bit of praise that comes in. But I did not believe the book worked and so was overjoyed to hear positive things. I'm starting to believe it now.

I've never met the West coast writer Theresa Kishkan, but she feels like a good friend through our on-going mutual admiration and correspondence. She just sent me this:

I thought the book was truly original and lively and so beautifully written. A gift for you (and for your readers) that you had access to not only the material record of that time in your life (journal, letters, etc.) but also that you had access to that girl -- the rich landscape of her heart and her affections. A wonderful accomplishment.

Thank you very much, Theresa. A gift for me, certainly. And thank you for your own writing work, which is precise and profound and beautiful.

And a welcome note from Patsy Ludwick, who's been one of my dearest friends since 1970 and the first major editor of this book. Congratulations on the occasion of the grand launching of your book, the culmination of all these years, decades, of writing, writing, writing. 

No one knows better than she, my wise and patient guide, the many, the endless drafts that were needed before this final product appeared.

There's an article in the Business section of the Star today - Tim Horton's opened in 1964, fifty years ago, so they celebrated with a Sixties event downtown, with actors in 60's clothes and giant cars with fins. There's a photo. Underneath, the caption describes "a retro scene with dancing actors and antique cars..."

Antique. From 1964.

What does that make me?

I can see the caption writer, who's 27. "Wow, look at those antique cars!" Sigh.

The paper is majorly depressing - missing girls in Nigeria, the usual vileness coming from our PM in Ottawa, Alberta selling off important caribou herding grounds, Tim Hudak sounding horrifyingly like Mike Harris, my least favourite politician on Planet Earth. It's good to smile about being an antique.