Footnotes to a Conversation, April 25, 2022
Creativity & Imagination
I am so looking forward to receiving a copy of Cashmere Comes from Goats by S. Portico Bowman (launch date is May 1). I had the great good fortune to help edit the book, and I’m so pleased she found a receptive publisher (no easy task!). The book is funny and quirky. The word play and the evolution of the characters delights, and there are many twists and turns in the story line. It is above all, a positive, optimistic book: people can change and find what they’re looking for, although often in unexpected ways.
“Was it the death of her dog, Bloom, or was she just tired of her routine as a dentist? Or perhaps her depression was the result of her (mostly) unrequited love for her former piano teacher, Bruno? As Robin contemplates a sabbatical to see puffins in Newfoundland, a fateful Google search puts everything on hold. When she ‘accidentally’ finds Bruno's grown son - or - a younger double - living in France with a woman Bruno knew briefly many years ago, Robin has a choice: stay in Canada and monitor her distant father's suspected dementia, or accept Bruno's demand that she go with him to France, and help him face fatherhood a few decades too late.”
Portico is also offering a workshop from Aug. 24-28 at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island, BC. The workshop is entitled Drawing Towards the Earth: Making Journals for Life and was originally scheduled for summer 2020. You’ll have an opportunity to draw with natural materials (charcoal, graphite, red ocher), create Coptic stitch Arcadia Playhouse journals, and Bargello tapestry bookmarks. The slow, repetitive creative process is designed to be contemplative, meditative, and introspective. In addition, Cortes Island provides the most fabulous garden setting surrounded by the ocean. Book before May 25 and get a 10% discount.
Portico Bowman is a writer, artist, and art teacher who grew up in Saskatoon. Let her know if you’d like her to Zoom with your book club.
Feathered People & People with Leaves
“In English, we never refer to a person as ‘it.’ Such a grammatical error would be a profound act of disrespect. ‘It’ robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a thing. And yet in English, we speak of our beloved Grandmother Earth in exactly that way: as ‘it.’ The language allows no form of respect for the more-than-human beings with whom we share the Earth. In English, a being is either a human or an ‘it’ … What would it feel like to be part of a family that includes birches and beavers and butterflies? We’d be less lonely. We’d feel like we belonged. We’d be smarter.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer goes on to say that language is part of the solution. She suggests ‘ki’ and ‘kin’ as pronouns for our fellow beings.
“On behalf of the living world, let us learn the grammar of animacy. We can keep ‘it’ to speak of bulldozers and paperclips, but every time we say ‘ki,’ let our words reaffirm our respect and kinship with the more-than-human world. Let us speak of the beings of Earth as the ‘kin’ they are.” [Yes Magazine]
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.
If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.