I have to try to update my photo gallery more often! Problem is I do it so infrequently that each time I put together the web album, I have to relearn the process of posting it! Argh! In some ways it would be so much easier to just hand all the website maintenance over to […]

It’s ironic that I would feel like I’ve kind of ‘made it’ when I received my first hate email a little while back. My first thought was, “I must have done something right!” And my second thought was, “What if this person is right about me?” I have seen too many people delude themselves. These are […]

A few years ago when Jon Stewart was hosting the Academy awards, the African American group that won for best song/score started jumping around at the announcement. Up till that point, Jon was uncharacteristically subdued and not his usual irreverent self. But at this show of raw emotion, he perked up and said something about how […]

There’s only been one other time that I’ve been as nervous as I was before the Golden Kite speech, and that was just before giving the plenary speech at the Danish IBBY Congress. Actually, that moment was more intense–at least this time I wasn’t going to say anything controversial. (I’d already done that on Friday.) […]

I only had to do one ‘presentation’ at the conference and it was last Friday. Nevertheless, I was pretty nervous. Writing about other cultures is a pretty contentious issue, especially with my approach to it. It was funny, because as I was preparing for the trip on Wednesday evening (I had to leave at 6 […]

I knew a guy once who worked years to get his first book published in the children’s market. He was on a board I frequented. The first school visit he did, I think he showed up in jeans and bragged to the kids that he could work in his pyjamas. I think he only ever […]

And what an experience. I’m starting to hate the travel that’s involved. I’m starting to dread packing and going to the airport…especially during summertime when I’m supposed to have some time to myself. But I’ve learned not to grumble because everytime I think this will be a lot of work, I end up having a great […]

The first time I’d ever heard of Norman Bethune was probably in passing in Grade nine history. Mr. Regan, our very handsome history teacher, let us choose different topics to present to the class, and one of the topics was Dr. Norman Bethune. I didn’t pick that one. I picked something about the Palestinian/Israeli situation, […]

Oprah said luck is preparation meeting opportunity. And somewhere else I heard that it’s really good to ‘develop in the dark’. That is, use the years that you are unknown, to hone your skills, so that when the spotlight shines on you, you’re ready to shine back. And I think it was while I was watching the […]

On Friday I got one of those characteristic thick envelopes that always signals that a teacher has assigned her students to write me a letter after one of my presentations. This was from a school up north I visited a while back. It was odd too, because I’ve often judged how well a presentation has […]