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NON-FICTION No questions, just lend a hand Globe and Mail, A few Sundays
ago, the day after my grand-daughter died, I went to visit my mother. My
mother is 88; she knew I’d donated a kidney to Amelia last June. I said, “Mom,
I have very sad news. Amelia died yesterday.”
MORE Good-bye Amelia Globe and Mail, On the morning of
Speech for Amelia’s memorial service Hart House, Amelia was two when I met her for the first time in January
1983. I was 30. We all joked that I was the third grand-father, after Alan,
who was number 1, and Robin, who was number two. Being number three absolved
me of any serious responsibility; I was free to enjoy her as the sunny,
funny, good-natured kid she was. MORE Joint Venture Feature story,
Globe and Mail, On the day of the transplant, I woke up at 5, a few
minutes before the alarm. I got out of bed, put on a pair of jeans and a
black t-shirt, took the dog out, and carried the garbage cans out to the
curb. The morning air felt warm and humid. My bag was packed and I was ready
and there was nothing else to do so I sat on the front step and waited for
the cab. MORE Sailing
into the Rainforest The black bear was enjoying a late dinner in a clearing
near the riverbank. He looked up, leafy greens still in his mouth, and stared
at us. We boldly returned his stare. It was easy to be bold because we were
sitting in a zodiac with a hundred feet of the The Year of
Magical Thinking For close to forty years now, Joan Didion has used her
masterful skills as a non-fiction writer to conduct a subtle and persistent interrogation
of American culture and political life. Her writing is at once intensely
subjective and completely objective; free of any obvious bias or political
loyalty, she’s always searching for the truth, for the reality behind the
image, for the mechanism behind the curtain, for the wizard at the
controls. MORE Losing our
religion Social change can shake the ground like thunder, but it can also arrive as silently as a sunrise. In 2001 almost five million Canadians told Statistics Canada that they have no religion. That’s a record number—16 percent of the population, up from 12 percent in 1991 and just one percent in 1971. MORE
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon was
searching for the elusive Fountain of Youth when he landed on the coast of Meet Alice,
the 10-year-old ethicist Is there any entity on the planet more predictable than a giant corporation? In typical copycat fashion, Nortel Networks has overreacted to its recent accounting misadventures by creating the post of Chief Ethics Officer. MORE Jumper One night I drove to
In the fall of 1972 I packed all my belongings in the
trunk of an old Volkswagen and drove south from In memory
of my father Dad went into hospital on Friday after
suffering a heart attack the day before. I got a call from the doctor on
Sunday morning. She said dad’s condition was serious and that he might only
last hours, or at most, days. I booked a flight to Impotent no
more Viagra is a funny word, funnier than sex or penis or vagina or intercourse. You don’t need to construct a Viagra joke, because the word contains its own setup and punchline. Just drop it into a conversation and if there are men present in the room you will get a laugh, or at the very least, smirks and smiles. MORE What should
we talk about now? For the last six months, my father has
spent all of his nights and most of his days in a pink room on the second
floor of LeisureWorld, a nursing home near Ladder 25 Ladder 25 of the New York City Fire Department is a small fire station on West 77th Street, on the upper west side of Manhattan. At the beginning of October, I was staying for a few days in a studio apartment in a brownstone just down the street from Ladder 25, and every morning on my way to the subway, and every evening, on my way back, I would stop at the sidewalk memorial of flowers, candles, photos and messages paying tribute to the six firefighters who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. MORE Why I sail Few sailors will admit it, but sailing is mostly about escape. We sail to get away, and often dream of staying away, as though our boats could provide passage to a different and better life. When we push off from the dock, almost giddy with a sense of freedom, we put the land behind us and the sea in front of us, and trust in our skills and a couple of tons of fiberglass, wood and metal to keep us afloat. But we rarely stray far. Six hours later, we close the circle of imagined freedom by stepping back onto the same dock and then we breathe a sigh of relief to be safe again. MORE Home I have come home to help my mother. By
“home” I do not mean the house in Requiem for
a friendship If I look to the west on my way to work
in the morning, I can see the tallest building in |
