"she's been wandering the desert mall looking for bread among the stones"

"...you could file her with the scraps of paper she has stashed in her purse/she's the piece of cloth unravelling at her feet..." ( from  Janet Cowan's "Dear John")

Wonderful lines.  I like how poetry has a month dedicated to it.  Is there an essay month or a novel month too?
I loved poetry when I was a kid, liked the sound of the words we had to read aloud as part of our language arts classes. Children's poems, full of rhythm and rhyme and humour.  Then I avoided it, as much as was possible, for the rest of my formal education.  I think I believed that it had been placed on a pedestal, where only the elite could truly understand the mystical process that poetry writing entailed. But as an avid reader knows, all different kinds of writing must be sampled, and eventually, poetry has become part of my reading. Thank you poetry, and poets, for helping to show how complicated is life.

wasteland

The wasteland can be a place where you're stuck waiting.... wastelands like a mechanic's garage when your vehicle has broken down. A dreary place, but a little better than being stuck on the highway wasteland waiting for help.  Or it could be a wasteland like when you're waiting at a cemetery and you don't really know anyone except the person who died and  so you sit in your vehicle saying your goodbye in your head, just waiting for the ceremony to be over.  Or maybe it's when you've been waiting forever for a serious change, but it's not in your control, so you try to have faith, but you're finally losing your religion.  Where or what is your wasteland?

Where do you use your laptop?

Since I was sick so much of May, I started doing what I previously had said I would never do,  which is to use my laptop while in bed.  This, along with watching TV in bed, were my taboos.  However, after not being able to doing anything much except lie in bed for about three weeks, (except for forcing myself to go to work and suffering,  because we don't get proper medical leave on reserve) I couldn't take it anymore.  I got my laptop plugged in and surfed the net, trying to find a better diagnosis than what the doctors were giving me. I actually slept with the laptop, well, in my lap.
It has now become a habit.I suppose it could count as reading in bed, something which I absolutely do not have a problem with.  Reading in bed is good.  Having a laptop in bed is something I am slowly getting used to.  However, I will not use it in bed unless I am alone. That's still too much like having a TV in the bedroom, which is not going to happen.

Musings on Aboriginal Day...

Aboriginal Day falls on the Summer Solstice. On reserves, this is a holiday.  Now, our on-reserve school is not going to have that day off.  Rather, we are going to get Friday (payday) off instead.  Since we have two cultural days planned anyway, it has been decided that the school will host Aboriginal Day (all staff working), instead people of going elsewhere to celebrate. 
It is true that the community has not prepared any special events for the day itself.  The reasoning is, therefore, that the school should  step in, rather than have people go somewhere else to celebrate the day.  And this way, people get a three-day long weekend. Hmm...
I'm still having a little trouble with this though. Shouldn't it be up to the community to decide how to celebrate the day? Yes, they don't plan parades (probably not very cultural) or traditional events.  However, that is their choice. Also, there is an ongoing problem with parents not sending school-age children to school on payday Fridays.  Does this mean that we are sanctioning this behaviour?  And could we do the same with Canada Day? Would Canadians prefer a 3-day weekend over celebrating on July 1?  What is more respectful - celebrating on the actual day, or going ahead with a cultural day which would be fun to attend?
Personally, I hope it means that community pride will pick up after this and we can plan on community volunteers picking up the slack next year. (It still occurs to me that I am possibly biased my thinking that Aboriginal Day must be "celebrated" in a certain way.) What I do know is I certainly think we should always have the Summer Solstice off!
What say you?