blogcutter

After the lazy (or not) hazy crazy days of summer, with festivals and once-a-year activities and such, all the more routine activities seem to start up with a vengeance in the fall. So yes, I've been busy. Some people maintain that busy-ness is a choice and I guess sometimes it is - for example, a workaholic who cherishes the illusion that they're indispensable or uses work to distract themself from other aspects of their life, like friendlessness or a miserable love life.

In my case, I've been busy with activities that are more or less essential, or at the very least advisable. Mostly medical stuff: the GP, the rheumatologist, the oncologist, the dentist and the eye doctors. Getting blood tests and the requisite vaccinations. Personal maintenance things mostly so I shudder to think of what life must be like for those with major health concerns, especially if they're living in poverty and have no family doctor.

It's left little time for blogging and whenever I've thought about posting lately, I'm plagued with blogger's block - or should that be blogger's clog?

There's a lot I'd like to put down on paper as well as on screen but to sum it up in a sentence and risk coming across as a drama queen, it would be:

What is this world coming to?

or alternatively:

Have we forgotten how to treat each other? Is socialization even a thing any more, or has it become a dirty word?

I'm optimistic enough to believe that critical thinking can at least be learned and taught but emotional intelligence is a considerably harder lesson. Technology has brought us a lot of benefits but it's problematic when some high-ranking person or conglomerate decides that everyone MUST use a particular technology just because it's there (and likely because they themselves reap considerable financial benefit from it)!

The news lately has been pretty dismal even in once-sleepy little Ottawa: every day we hear of stabbings and attacks. But I'm not only talking about the most extreme displays of incivility. I'm talking about day-to-day things, like no longer being able to get in-person service for day-to-day transactions. No longer being allowed to use cash or cheques. Being just expected, if not outright required, to use smartphones and apps for everything, thereby sacrificing our privacy, identity, health (both physical and mental) and more.

There's political polarization too. I remember a time when even when politicians espoused views and policies totally antithetical to my vision of things, they were still decent people able to engage in respectful discussion. Maybe even modify their or my views in the process. Not so much any more. Surely they could devote more time, energy and attention to issues that transcend party lines and that a broad swath of citizens would support, regardless of their party affiliations?

Does anyone out there have a recipe for defeating despair?

Let's suppose your kid has been labeled as bright by the Educational Experts. What does that kid need to succeed in classes for the gifted and beyond them, as a Leader of Tomorrow?

Sixty years ago, the answer to that question was (cue drum roll) ... A set of encyclopedias!

https://beatcrave.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-the-encyclopedia-salesman-by-reese-lansangan/

Let's just say that back then, educators believed in streaming not mainstreaming, and in enrichment not homogenization. And while those long-ago Educational Experts might now be tossing and turning in their graves if they knew what some of us had become, I can see upsides and downsides to both approaches, depending on the particular child.

Anyway, sixty years ago, my parents did indeed buy the World Book Encyclopedia. Those green-and-white volumes made the journey to my mother's retirement home and after she died, they came into my possession. I still have a sentimental attachment to them which is probably just as well, since the places that will accept your discarded books mostly stipulate NO ENCYCLOPEDIAS OR TEXTBOOKS!!! Still, once I shuffle off this mortal coil, I suspect they are doomed to end up in the great graveyard in the landfill, and my grandchildren will have to pay the dumping fees!

So the encyclopedia was actually not a bad investment, though perhaps not quite for the same reasons as those touted by Encyclopedia Salesman of the Year 1964, or by those Educational Experts who decided via the black magic (or at the very least grey magic) of I.Q. tests that I showed promise.

Fortunately I was the kind of kid who loved reading encyclopedias and dictionaries and almanacs, picking up useless bits of random information that my much-more-learned older siblings might not know.

So as a tribute to the World Book Encyclopedia and to encyclopaediae in general, allow me to present a few selected excerpts.

First off, from the entry for EDUCATION. It begins as follows:

"EDUCATION includes all the ways in which one person deliberately tries to influence the behavior of another person."

The entry goes on to distinguish between formal education and informal education. In terms of people and institutions (other than actual schools and teachers) that educate, the article credits: parents; libraries and museums; churches; and governments.

The entire article takes up nine pages, including various illustrations, tables, diagrams, a map of world literacy rates, and a list of suggested further reading. Of course, it has to be borne in mind that it's an encyclopedia aimed at children and deals in much more detail with the American context. There are nine sections to the article: three for education in general, three for education in the U.S., and one each for Canada, "Other countries" and "International education".

One feature of the encyclopedia that always fascinated me as a child was the trade-named Trans-vision maps. Under the entry for CANADA, Its Changing Frontiers, there was a map of Canada showing its physical topography. On top of it were 6 transparent pages showing the political divisions in 1763, 1812 ("Brave explorers probe the far Northwest" it informed me),1846, 1873, 1914, and "Canada Today" [i.e. 1964].

The entry under HUMAN BODY also had Trans-vision overlays, beginning with a skeleton over which you could (just by turning the page!) gradually overlay the various internal organs, veins and arteries, and so forth, all of them meticulously labelled. If you remember the buildable 3D models of The Invisible Man that used to be sold in hobby shops (maybe they still are), this was basically a 2D version of it. Mind you, I'm hard-pressed even as an adult to determine whether it's an invisible man or woman or intersex person - they do seem to have done their utmost to keep them gender-neutral!

Obviously an encyclopedia geared to kids - or any encyclopedia, for that matter - is not going to fulfil all of a person's homework-related or research-related needs for long. But 60 years ago, it was not a bad starting point. And it's interesting to note that World Book is one of the few encyclopedias that continues to publish in print, in hardcover, and on genuine glossy (and Trans-Vision) paper:

https://www.theledger.com/story/business/columns/2024/01/06/yes-world-book-encyclopedia-still-publishes-in-print-gadget-daddy/72110891007/

This week, I went to Paper-Papier in the Byward Market to stock up on 2025 planners. I keep a spiral-bound, desk-sized planner in the living room beside my TV-watching, talking-on-the-telephone, using-my-laptop spot on the sofa. I keep a mini-planner in an outer pocket of my handbag and it goes just about everywhere with me. Both are week-at-a-glance type, with each week taking up a double page of the planner. At the front and back of these planners are various pages with plenty of useful and interesting information, plus space for writing down plans, projects and random notes.

So anyway for 2025, my desk-sized planner is a Letts, very similar to the one I'm using now for 2024. But for my pocket-or-purse-sized planner, I decided to try a Leuchtturm version that caught my eye.

I've never really embraced the idea of using online calendars to mark down my appointments, although I was required to do that at the office, in the years before I retired (in 2009). And in fact for just about anything else I have to or choose to do, I always find that writing something longhand reinforces things in my mind far better than inputting it into a computer - and I can organize and massage and reflect upon my thoughts more effectively too. And that seems to be the overriding philosophy of the folks that designed these Leuchtturm writing products too:

https://www.leuchtturm1917.com/wnt-all/

Yes, I really do, to a great extent, think with my hands. And feel with my hands too. Of course that applies in the literal physical sense, if I'm groping in the dark for a light-switch, for example. But it's also true in the emotional sense as well. It's so much easier to express on paper why I'm sad or angry or looking forward to something if I can cross stuff out with big blue or black lines or erase it and rephrase things without worrying about whether I've got the latest version of Word or Pages and whether I should install updates now and whether I know that this week I spent 30% more time on this device than last week. Just SPARE ME ALL THE NOISE ALREADY!!!

Here's the English-language version of how the Leuchtturm people explain the notion of thinking with your hand:

Writing by hand is thinking on paper. Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Memories become stories.Ideas are transformed into projects. Notes inspire insight. We write and understand, learn, see and think - with the hand.

And for those of you who read German, here's the original:

Schreiben mit der Hand ist Denken auf Papier. Aus Gedanken werden Worte, Sätze, Bilder. Erinnerungen werden zu Geschichten, Ideen verwandeln sich in Projekte. Aus Notizen entsteht Durchblick. Wir schreiben und verstehen, vertiefen, sehen, denken - mit der Hand.

I particularly like the word "vertiefen" in the German original, conveying the notion of depth of understanding and perception far better than the word "learn" in the English translation.

The company name Leuchtturm (lighthouse or literally, light-tower) is illuminating (both literally and metaphorically) too. I don't think there are too many manned (personed?) lighthouses left these days but to me it's a wonderful image - a beacon of light in an increasingly impersonal world?

Anyway, we'll see how it goes as I move into 2025!

In my June 17 post, I poured out my dismay about two significant scheduled events that were abruptly cancelled at the last minute: a cataract operation and an Air Canada flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg. There has been some positive progress on both fronts.

As I mentioned in that post, the canceled cataract surgery (originally scheduled for May 31) was rescheduled to August 28, but I was put on a cancellation list. Then on July 8, I got a call asking if I was available the following day. I deliberated for maybe a quarter of a second before saying yes. It did mean bailing on a Music & Beyond concert I'd thought about attending, but the prospect of better vision won out.

Things went smoothly this time. Exactly one week from today, I'll be finished with all three varieties of eye drops I was prescribed. I've needed glasses since I was seven years old so it's truly a novel experience to be able to watch TV or go for a walk without them. I still need glasses for a few things but over-the-counter drugstore reading glasses are doing the job reasonably well until I can get my eyes tested again.

I also wrote about a cancelled Air Canada Ottawa-to-Winnipeg flight that was scheduled for June 10. After returning to Ottawa, I followed all the instructions on the Air Canada site for applying for compensation, giving all the requested details of the flight. A day or two later, I got their standard boilerplate brushoff, saying that the cancellation was determined to be within Air Canada's control but required for safety reasons so I was not entitled to compensation. But I persisted.

I replied that of course I understood that passenger and crew safety must not be compromised and that that particular plane couldn't be dispatched as originally scheduled. However, I went on, the substitute flight was certainly not equivalent to the one I had selected at time of booking in a number of respects, so I felt I should qualify for at least a partial refund. Would they be prepared to review my case?

That seemed do the trick and I was passed up the chain of command. Soon I got quite a reasonable e-mail back from someone else (maybe even a real live human!) saying that she had been assigned to look at my request and determine the amount of my refund. Then maybe a week or so later, I got an itemized account of how much I'd paid them and how much I'd be getting back.

So essentially they agreed to refund half of what I paid. They say it will be refunded to my credit card but that I should allow two billing cycles for it to appear on my credit card statement.

I haven't seen my money yet but I'll be keeping track and holding them to account!

In my June 17 entry, I also mentioned my latest trip on VIA rail, from Toronto to Ottawa. The train was late but before we even disembarked, we were informed that we could get 50% off the next ticket booked, as long as it was within 12 months.

I probably didn't really need to do anything in this case but I decided to e-mail them anyway, to ask whether I could expect some sort of coupon to appear in my online VIA Preference profile. I'm glad I did.

The thing is, I'm not sure at the moment when my next train trip is likely to be. What if I found I didn't want to take a train trip over the next 12 months and couldn't use my 50% off before it expired?

Well, it turned out I could get a bunch of Preference points instead. The points don't expire. And if it turns out I do take a bunch of train trips after all, the additional points I accrue might even bump me up to the next tier of their loyalty program.

I went with the points option and they've already been added to my profile.

So I guess if there's a moral to the story, it's ... persistence (potentially) pays off?

Cancel Culture is alive and well. No, I'm not talking about being blocked or unfriended or ghosted on social media. I'm talking about stuff that literally gets cancelled at the last minute. Important stuff. Stuff that demands considerable planning, preparation and fancy logistics, all of which turns out to be for naught.

In the past few weeks, I've endured two such cancellations. One was a cataract operation. The other was an Air Canada flight. Let's take them one by one, shall we?

My cataract surgery was to take place on May 31, at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital. So I got there as instructed around noon on the 31st, having had no solid food since suppertime on May 30. I was allowed only clear fluids, like black coffee, apple juice and gingerale. The surgery itself was scheduled for 1:30 PM and it was estimated that I'd be allowed to go home again by 3PM, as long as I was escorted by a responsible adult.

So far, so good. I got there and was seen by various nurses and technicians and whoever, who pumped the eye full of various varieties of eye drops at regular intervals. Then back to the waiting area. 1:30 PM came and
went. then 2PM. Then maybe around 2:20, I was finally called into an interior waiting area where I waited prone on a gurney, glasses off, a goofy cap around my hair, a little bag with my meagre accompanying belongings at my feet and a heated blanket over me. And waited, along with a couple of other patients in similar poses.

Finally some kind of supervising person came in and gathered other hospital people around her in a huddle and explained to them that there was no way that all three of us could get our surgery this afternoon. Just one. The woman who won this patient, patience-straining lottery had come in for the day from Deep River along with her escort, so really she was the most logical choice. And as I recall, she was already there when I arrived at noon, so goodness knows what time her surgery had been scheduled for. Supervisor-lady told me: Sorry, I'm afraid your surgery has been cancelled. But we're going to feed you! You can have crackers & cheese or a carrot muffin. I'll even give you both if you like!

I never actually saw my ophthalmologist while there, but he phoned me that evening to apologize for the cancelled surgery, mention when his upcoming operating room hours were, and assure me it would definitely happen this summer.

In the "Talk about coincidences!" department: Just minutes ago, I got a phone call from my ophthalmologist's
office: my new surgery date is August 28; it may even be before then, as I'm also on the cancellations list (for patient-initiated cancellations, that is). We shall see - and more importantly, I shall see!!

Now for the Air Canada flight. This past week, I've been in Winnipeg for the Canadian Health Librarians conference and afterwards in Toronto for the Bony Blithe (crime fiction) Mini-Con. One of my sisters lives In Winnipeg and I hadn't seen her in person in years. Nor had I ever in my life been to the Human Rights Museum there.

So I booked the only direct Air Canada flight I could find from Ottawa to Winnipeg. At time of booking, it was scheduled for 4:10 PM last Monday (June 10). But several weeks later, they informed me that the new departure time would be 6:30 PM. That was less convenient for me but still doable. On June 9, they invited me to "check in" for my flight, which I did, and they e-mailed me a boarding pass. Since I wouldn't be arriving in Winnipeg until the evening, I had decided to splurge on a nice seat and its associated amenities, including a vegetarian meal.

On flight day, I arrived at the Ottawa airport and everything seemed to be going according to plan. I presented my boarding pass, got through security in good time and the departures board indicated the flight was on time and even indicated what gate I'd be departing from, although the flight wasn't due to leave for another couple of hours.

Great! I could grab a coffee, read my book, maybe avail myself of the free airport wi-fi, browse the shops.

Somewhere around 5:15 or 5:30, I thought I'd better check the Departures board again in case the flight was delayed or the departure gate had changed.

Well. The flight had been cancelled altogether!

I was directed to an Air Canada customer service desk between two of the departure gates, where I learned they had booked me on a new flight. One that didn't leave till the next morning. One that was NOT direct, but rather had a connecting flight at Pearson Airport in Toronto. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike that airport and try to avoid it?

So I told the agent that didn't work for me and she then booked me on a Westjet direct flight leaving at 9:35 that same evening. It was in the Economy cabin, 3 seats across, I was seated on the aisle whereas I prefer a window seat, and I had to pay for my own food. Still, it was better than waiting till the next day. I'm now working on getting some sort of partial refund from Air Canada.

So I got to my librarians' conference, I got to the Human Rights museum with my sister, brother-in-law and niece, and then I flew from Winnipeg to Toronto for the Bony Blithe event. The Bony Blithe event, by the way, was supposed to happen in 2020. Then in 2021, then in 2022, and so on. But in 2024, it did happen! I had a great time and it was worth the wait.

Overall, I much prefer train travel to plane travel. I took a very efficient train from Pearson Airport to Union Station, using my Presto card. I took a VIA Rail train from Toronto back to Ottawa. It was late, of course, but the food and wine and service were all great. And kudos to VIA: they actually announced right off the bat that in light of the late arrival, all passengers would be entitled to a 50% off voucher for VIA rail travel that we could redeem any time in the next 12 months. I'm already planning my next trip!

So I recently got back from an enjoyable but exhausting week-long trip to Berlin.

Until just now, the last time I was in Germany - West Germany, that is - was 1972. I had an international student card. I spent June and July studying German at the Goethe Institut in Schwäbisch Hall, a short train ride from Stuttgart. I was billeted with a family who owned and operated a pub and restaurant. I shared a room there with another Goethe Institut student who was from Finland.

This time, I was able to take advantage of pensioners' rates on my hotel room and some local attractions. I bought a 6-day Welcome Card, entitling me to unlimited transportation on the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn and Berlin's whole vast public transit network, as well as significant discounts (usually 25%, sometimes more) on admission to various points of interest, like museums. I swear, they have a museum for almost everything!

General impressions? Berlin, at least the central area where I spent nearly all my time, is very bicycle-friendly and pedestrian-friendly, although there as here, there's lots of construction underway. The weather was glorious - it didn't rain once! There were plenty of outdoor patios. As far as what I consumed on those patios, I'd have to say I didn't have a lot of traditional German food (or at least, what I think of as such), though I did drink German beer. I ate Italian (lots of gelato places too), I ate Vietnamese, I ate Mexican. At the Mexican place, I actually drank a tequila sunrise - something I no longer see on the menus of Mexican restaurants over here, though it was a staple of my undergraduate student days. I will say that the Germans take their chocolate very seriously! My hotel was just a couple of blocks from Rausch chocolates (both an extensive store and a restaurant with patio) and everything I got from there was excellent, including their dark chocolate liqueur!

Many Berlin-folk seem to be smokers, something which surprised me a little, as so much of Europe (if not the world) is going smoke-free. They also don't seem to be morning people - many of the major attractions didn't open till noon or even 2PM. It was very easy to find postcards but very difficult to find places to buy stamps for them or to mail them.

I signed up for two guided walks, one in English and the other in German. The English one was on Christopher Isherwood, and led by Brendan Nash, who has himself written several books. I enjoyed that walk very much. The meeting point was the U-Bahn station at Nollendorfplatz, Saturday morning at 11AM. And afterwards, I was able to browse the stalls of the Wintermarkt where I bought bread, cheese, a few second-hand books and a very nice handmade jacket. I had a latish lunch on the patio at Vamos, which is where I enjoyed the aforementioned tequila sunrise. The market people packed up at 4PM and I moved on too - to the zoo, where I managed to see the pandas, the big cats and a few other random animals before closing time.

The next day, I went on the Courage walk, organized by the Literaturhaus. Courage was a feminist newspaper of the 1970s, which only lasted a couple of years although a subsequent paper, Emma, is apparently still going strong to this day. We did get to leaf through a copy of Courage and that was very interesting. Overall, though, I found the walk a bit disappointing. I felt the guide cast his net too wide and we spent a large part of the time just looking at the Gedenktafeln for people along Fasanenstrasse - people who seemed to be really only tangentially relevant to the whole feminist press ventures that were what interested me.

I'll talk more about my Berlin stay (and a side trip to Leipzig) in my next post, but I think this is enough for one day.

The Olympic Committee is proud of its ecological consciousness and has boasted that the summer games in Paris this year will be the greenest ever. And now, thanks to the activism of numerous high-profile groups of national and international citizenry, the Games will be greener still, with the green bookseller stalls of the storied bouquinistes allowed to remain. There are numerous articles about it out there, but here are two that I think sum up the situation quite nicely:

​​​​​https://www.rawstory.com/paris-bouquinistes-resist-plans-to-remove-riverside-book-kiosks-for-2024-olympics/

https://ilab.org/article/positive-outcome-of-a-large-international-campaign-the-paris-bouquinistes-will-not-be-removed-during-the-2024-summer-olympic-games-in-paris

It seems not all sports-minded people are made in the mold of Big Bobby Clobber. Mind you, my imagination was going wild envisioning the various ways bouquiniste culture could be incorporated into a whole raft (pun definitely intended) of new Olympic sports! For example:

1) The stall disassemble/reassemble challenge: How quickly can the competing bouquinistes dismantle and reassemble their stalls without damaging the merchandise, destroying the heritage value of their structures or breaking any of the rules regarding dimensions of boxes and shelving units (any of which would result in automatic disqualification)?

2) The sniffer dog challenge: How quickly can the dogs and their handlers sniff out all the packages of explosives and illicit drugs concealed within or around the stall on the bookseller's property? To add to the fun, if the bomb goes off before it's discovered, the bookseller will be banned from Olympic competition for the next 400 years.

3) The security detail book-theft challenge: Security guards compete to foil would-be thieves from stealing books. Points awarded based on number of books and their estimated value.

I'm also mulling over a possible connection between "Share the Flame"/Olympic torch and book-burning.

Maybe you can think of a few more?

So on Wednesday, I went to Toronto for a few literary activities. I had signed up for a lunch and tour on the Thursday with some of my Ex Libris Association colleagues, centred around the Yorkville area.

My train actually arrived ahead of schedule to a beautiful sunny, warm day and as it was still too early to check into the hotel, I took the subway all the way up to Davisville and went for a walk along Mount Pleasant Road to the recently-opened Inhabit Books. It's quite small but very inviting, with an excellent selection of both adults' and children's books in both English and Inuktitut. But conscious as I was that I would have to lug any books I bought back to Ottawa, I tried very hard to limit my choices!

I ended up buying: an Inuktitut-English dictionary; a beautifully illustrated children's book called The Other Ones, by Jamesie Fournier, illustrated by TomaFeizo Gas; Elements, a bilingual book of poetry (Inuktitut on one side of the page spread, English on the other), also by Jamesie Fournier; and a memoir by Larry Audlaluk, What I Remember, What I Know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile.

Did I mention that Inhabit is not just a bookstore but also a publisher? For more information, see www.Inhabitmedia.com

By then it was late enough to check into the hotel, so off I went back to the subway. It was also getting into rush hour and as I got into the train, one leg gave way beneath me and momentarily got wedged between train and platform before somebody helped me to un-jam my foot, thereby averting what could have been a major disaster! I assured the nice young man that I didn't need any first aid or other medical attention and after a couple of minutes' delay, we were all on our way.

I checked into my hotel without further mishap and spent the evening unpacking, relaxing and watching TV.

The Ex Libris activities on Thursday involved lunch at The Pilot, followed by visits to the Metro Toronto Reference Library and the Yorkville Public Library in the afternoon. But before meeting the others for lunch, I had time to stop into Glad Day Books on Church Street, grab a coffee and browse their collection.

I really love that area of Toronto, although unfortunately the weather wasn't as great as the day before. Still, I saw some people I hadn't seen in years. We had our own separate room at the restaurant too, which facilitated conversation.

Late afternoon saw me heading back to my temporary home base, where I had a light snack and changed into some warmer clothes before heading out yet again into a rainy evening.

It was purely by chance that my visit to Toronto coincided with a double book launch by BookHug press at Type Books on Queen Street West. But I decided it was an opportunity not to be missed.

The book that really intrigued me was Blue Notes, a thriller by Anne Cathrine Bomann, a Danish psychologist and novelist who was in Toronto for the launch of the English translation of her book. It centres around the idea of prolonged grief as a form of mental illness. And what if a pill could be developed to "cure" people of that grief? In the book, a fictional pharmaceutical company claims to have done just that, trials are conducted and analyzed at a university and one of the researchers looking at the statistics notices what look like some disturbing side effects in those who have benefited most from the drug. The basic question it raises: in overcoming their grief, have these patients lost their capacity for empathy and even veered into psychopath territory?

I mostly read the book on the train trip back to Ottawa on Friday, finished it yesterday, and found it absolutely gripping!

The other book being launched (or actually re-launched in an expanded version) was a book of short stories called How You Were Born. That too sounded interesting and I may try to get hold of it at the library.

Overall, it was a fascinating two-day getaway.

I definitely would not be qualified to teach a course on personhood. But if such a course were offered to me, I'd sign up in a heartbeat!

What got me aboard this train of thought was a recent article about the Supreme Court of Alabama, which recently decreed that human embryos are children:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/us/alabama-embryo-law-ruling-supreme-court/index.html

"Preposterous!" was my immediate reaction. And I remain firmly pro-choice on the abortion question. But what exactly characterizes a child? Or an adult? Or a person?

Most Canadian adults are probably aware that Canadian women were not legally considered persons until 1929. Even then, we had to appeal to our colonial masters to earn that status, as the Supreme Court of Canada was not yet the highest court of the land.

Humans and prospective humans aside, there are other entities out there that have been granted the rights of personhood. Rivers, for instance:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/rivers-around-the-world-rivers-are-gaining-the-same-legal-rights-as-people

Or parks:

https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/fac_pubs/715/

I'll mention here that I see many advantages to prioritizing natural features like rivers, forests and wetlands over... I don't know, other things that seem less natural and desirable. But to deem them persons? That feels like a bit of a stretch. Do we need a category other than personhood like, for example, spirithood? But how would we ever come to some sort of consensus in defining a concept that nebulous?

I think we need to work on our terminology here. I'm just not quite sure how to go about it.

Welcome to Freedom to Read Week, February 18-24. If you live anywhere in Canada, you may be able to find an event you'd enjoy here:

https://www.freedomtoread.ca/events/?syclid=cn9rscj7v77s739m300g&utm_campaign=emailmarketing_129722318918&utm_medium=email&utm_source=shopify_email

If you're in Ontario, it's Family Day and all public libraries and schools are closed. If you're in the Ottawa area, it's the final day of Winterlude and the Rideau Canal is actually open, as is the community rink around the corner from us.

Over the past year, I've been reasonably content with the (lack of) decisions to ban books. The Ottawa Public Library received 7 "requests for reconsideration" of books on their shelves and acceded to none of them:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-public-library-book-challenges-tintin-stegosaure-1.7109676?cmp=rss

In Alberta, some public library materials relating to LGBTQ+ issues were returned damaged or vandalized, but I guess the good news is that the libraries did have those items available for loan in the first place, and police were called in.

The policies in school libraries (at least the ones I've heard about) are a little less progressive. But I was cheered by this article in a Brandon, Manitoba paper in which candidates in the fall 2023 provincial election were asked about their position on censorship:

https://www.brandonsun.com/local/2023/10/19/candidates-speak-against-book-bans-at-bsd-forum

The election resulted in a change of government, a shift to the left.

I'll conclude this entry with a link to an article on recently challenged books in Canadian libraries:

https://www.freedomtoread.ca/articles/rising-tide-of-censorship-recent-challenges-in-canadian-libraries/