Nature / Writing

When I was a kid, one of my favourite chores was polishing silverware. I can't say how many times I was asked to do it, though it couldn't have been very many. Most of the time the good silverware lived in a heavy wooden chest on the top shelf of the hall closet, waiting patiently for a few holiday dinners a year. But every once in awhile it would be brought down and placed on the big table on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday, and I would be set up with a little blue tin of silver polish and a soft white cloth. I would methodically work my way through the curious array of oversized spoons and undersized forks and oddly shaped knives, genuinely enjoying myself. I wish I could say my pleasure came from being able to contribute to family celebrations, but the truth is that I just really liked watching the tarnish disappear beneath my fingers. It didn't feel like cleaning; it felt like I was conducting a ceremony to remove a curse.  It felt like magic. Decades later, I don...

A few months ago I first tried out an app called Litterati , which encourages people to not only clean up litter, but to photograph it, tag it, and place it on a map as citizen science, so that those who are trying to combat litter at its source have information on what kind of garbage is showing up where. The app also tracks your total count of what you've cleaned up so you can compare yourself to others and even create your own club for a little friendly competition and added motivation. View this post on Instagram Party's Over 🗑 #Litterati #litter #balloons #garbage A post shared by Marilyn Anne Campbell (@marilyn.cam) on Dec 3, 2018 at 6:16am PST I love the idea of the app, but it and my tablet are not getting along when it comes to mapping. That's part of why I stopped using it when I initially downloaded it in the summer. I decided recently to give it another go, but the problem persists. For exampl...

I haven’t been writing much lately. Nothing creative, at least. I have been writing more tweets than usual, and posting more in Facebook groups. Plus there was that one out-of-character Facebook rant for friends and family to enjoy. There have been extensive comments on proposed government policies, and corresponding emails to politicians. And I have some business and media types still on my to-email list. So I guess there have been a lot of words, just not a lot of stories. It’s hard to focus on making things up when so much real life is disappearing. My recent words have been about caribou, coyotes, and cormorants. November, once reserved for the dug-in flurry of fiction writing that is Nanowrimo, has instead been filled with public meetings and private missives sent to friends who I both hope and fear are feeling the same way I am. How do you take time to make art when the world is in ecological crisis? How do you live your normal life? And should you even try? I’m ...