Yours Truly, a book of the blog

A long chilly spring and then, POUF,  summer in an hour, right now 26 degrees feeling like 29, hot sun, the garden exploding, everyone bewildered and sunburned. C'est la vie canadienne.

Haven't written in a while, just lots going on, though I'm not sure what. Well yes I do — teaching started, U of T on Zoom on Tuesday and the home class on Thursday, IN PERSON, real live human beings on the deck, five of the ten, so wonderful to be together again. Jennifer baked a delicious lemon cake. The stories were as always stellar. Such good writers, thrilling. 

The best!

And more in person events, meeting fellow writers Pamela and Catherine for drinks at Hemingway's and Toronto Lynn at the Gardiner Museum to see the Shari Boyle exhibit (very skilful, very strange), have a coffee, get caught up. Dear friends from university days, Suzette and Jessica, here for a sunny supper in the garden last night - the first time I've drunk hot weather rosé in Toronto in mid-May. 

A social week with actual people. Life returns. Though it's scary still, lots catching this thing, Lynn in France now has it. I am cautious, but it's so good to be with friends again. 

Biking home from the Gardiner, I passed an anti-abortion, anti-reproductive freedom march that was paralyzing University Avenue. I realize this is an extremely emotional and complex issue. But it's utterly incomprehensible to me to see, among the nuns and older women, many young women, all of them white, screaming about the unborn. How did they get co-opted into denying their own sexual freedom, their autonomy? As I read somewhere, "There is a term for living creatures who are not allowed to control their own reproduction. The term is 'livestock.'"

I could not stop myself from asking a group that had splintered off from the march, "What are you doing for living children?" No answer, but a lot of hostility. I pray this issue is not migrating from the US, as so much other angry vileness has. 

Sam is on his way over with Bandit, who's overheated, poor doggie. Sam will help me plant, lots of work to be done, if we can stand the heat. 

Still thrilled with my blog book; I now have all four volumes, with probably four more to come. So much there; what an interesting life that woman had! I got out my first blog book, Yours Truly: a book of the blog, which my friend Chris Loranger designed for me. My mother said it was the best book she'd ever read. 

If you want to find out how to turn a blog into a book with a story arc — and make your mother happy — please let me know. There are a few - more than a few - in a box in the basement.

PS Big Leafs game tonight; if they win they go on to the playoffs. Or something like that. I'm not watching but I heard the shouts of joy from neighbours and checked online: they just tied it one/one. 

Of course we know what happens to the dreams of Leafs fans. But I hope my fellow citizens can celebrate tonight. This city is in such bad shape — homelessness, hunger, excessive construction of monstrous high-rises, hideously snarled traffic, filthy streets,  a stuffy mayor and an anti-city, pro-car suburban premier. A little Leafs victory would go a long way.