valeriesbookofme

  The beginning of 2021 hasn't been the great release from 2020 that I had hoped it would be. The big issue for me--when can I travel again--is still up in the air. Knowing how many people have much more important issues that they are grappling with, I feel guilty that that is "all" I have to worry about. And of course it isn't "all"--I have approached my job with the school district with the same fervor I approached jobs before I retired. I have discovered I don't have the mental energy for that kind of effort; it has exhausted me, depressed me and I feel that I can't wait for the end of the school while still feeling guilty (there's that word again) that I didn't do a calmer job of it. Still, since I don't have the ability to solve the school district's problems, or cure the pandemic, or solve the border crisis, or even achieve a modicum of peace and contentment in my own corner of the world, I focus on lack of travel. Thus, when I ...

The recent news in London about Sarah Everard, the young woman who was murdered on her walk home has brought back memories of an experience I had one night in Toronto, 48 years ago. It's odd that I should think of it now, I who reads and watches so many crime thrillers. Why is it this that has spurred me to write about my experience when for years it's been tucked away in my memory? When I have watched so many shows about women (and men) being stalked and murdered? Perhaps by the end of this post I will know. I was a 20 year old college student, living for the first time away from home. I shared an apartment with a good friend, a bus ride away from campus. My friend hitchhiked around Toronto quite a bit but I had never been brave enough to try it. Until one autumn night, when I was on my way (ironically) to my first self-defense class and I missed the bus. There wouldn't be another one for an hour, so I decided I would stick my thumb out. I was almost regretting doing it...

As I have read the articles about the interview this week, I have noticed how loath people are to address the issue of Meghan's mental health (except for Piers Morgan.) And I certainly understand that, given Diana's fate, Carolyn Flack's fate, so many young people who feel that they have just lost too much.  No one should wish Meghan ill, or blame her for being, well, foolish: even the most competent-seeming person can have dark nights of the soul. I agree with Phillips (writer in The London Times) though that her dark nights shouldn't all be laid at the feet of the RF. She miscalculated what marrying a Royal would mean, she didn't understand how lonely it could be living in a foreign country, perhaps even she found that the man that she thought could protect her couldn't and she would have to take matters into her own hands, cut her losses and go home. With him in tow because she couldn't leave him behind. No own should blame HER for something that didn...