Accentuate the positive …

Today marks 12 years since my mom passed and I’m dedicating this post to her. She was an eternal optimist who always looked for and found, the good in people and in life. 

There was a time I did a lot of blogging, here and for Huff Post, on US politics. I finally gave it up because it was making me tense and angry and I decided I wanted to change the channel.

I didn’t only stop blogging about it, I stopped watching the news — primarily CNN, where’s there’s an endless loop of misery 24/7. I haven’t stopped watching completely but I have cut back dramatically. There are days now when I don’t watch at all, weeks when I only tune in once or twice, and only for the briefest

Back to doing what I love most …

I’ve been writing a lot lately about cutting back on my television viewing — or, more specifically — the News. So it won’t come as a surprise to hear that in the last couple of weeks I haven’t watched TV at all, and in the last month I don’t think I’ve watched even five hours.

Reading has been a passion my entire life. Even before I could read myself, I loved stories and was constantly bringing either my mum or dad a book so they could read to me. So it’s been disconcerting, and shocking to say the least, to find that in the past year or so, I’ve had a hard time carving off time to read, getting into whichever book(s) I’m reading and actually finishing them.

Too many distractions, I guess. Projects, deadlines, blogging, working on my own book, life, Trump — something’s always gotten in

I surrender …

I’ve always been a news and political junkie; and, when I moved to Toronto from Montreal, I instantly became addicted to CNN and its 24 hour news cycle. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven.

Now it’s more like being in hell.

Am I the only one struggling to find something positive on the news?

Not that I’m an escapist. I’ve never been one to bury my head in the sand, avoid reality or run away from it — even

Dear Santa …

(sigh).  Yes, I know.  It’s probably way too late in the game to be writing you — Christmas is just days away now.  But I’m hoping that, somehow, you’ve still got a miracle or two up your fur-trimmed sleeve.  We sure could use one.

You’re probably surprised to hear from me anyway, me being Jewish and all.  But honestly, if ever there was a time to put religion aside and start thinking as ‘one’, this has to be it.

Relax, Santa, it’s not gifts I’m after.  Not the usual kind, anyway.  So there’s no last-minute shopping for you, Mrs. Claus or the elves to do.  No wrapping either.  On the

Hanging on for dear life …

Me. The poster child for looking on the bright side. Positive thinking. Seeing the glass half full. A true believer in everything working out in the end. Me. That one. That girl. That woman.

Not so much at the moment, though. I’ve got to admit I’m struggling. So much bad news. Everywhere you turn. It’s absolutely unavoidable. We are just in one helluva mess. The whole world. All of us.

So much hatred. So much prejudice. So much anger. So much violence. So much bloodshed. So much death. So much destruction. So much rubble. So much despair. So much unrest. So much imbalance. So much poverty. So much hunger. So much misery. So much suffering. So much fear. So much grief. So many tears. So many scars. So much injustice.

So little hope.

So little respect. For each other. For life. For human rights. For freedom. Maybe even for ourselves.

Such a crisis.

There has to be something we can do. Why aren’t we?

Why aren’t we marching on our Nations’ capitals? Why aren’t we more selective about who we elect? Why don’t we demand more from them? Why don’t we hold

We interrupt this blog post …

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Day 352. Beyond Obnoxious!

Okay, enough already. Never has a vagina been under so much scrutiny. World-wide, I might add. I’m speaking, of course, of Monday’s Royal birth. I know anything to do with the Royals sells newspapers and raises ratings. But come on, give me a break.

Press have been camped outside of the hospital for weeks now. In this economy how can anyone justify the cost of sending, and housing, journalists in the UK for weeks. For what? To be the first to shoot a photo of an infant bundled in a blanket? A photo op that really could be covered by a wire-service photographer.

How sick are we to to be this obsessed?

We’ve lost our minds. And our civility. But the worst of the worst, the network that has brought “invasion of

Day 200. Trying Times

Yesterday a reader commented, on my post, about avoiding the news for the last few months, because of how depressing it is.  It’s true.  It’s terribly disillusioning.  To prove it, I decided to get yesterday’s Globe & Mail out of my recycling bin and give the headlines a quick scan.  To see if I could find anything remotely positive or pleasant:

Let’s start with the front page.  “Why Generation Y Should Fear Retirement”.  Hmmm.  Shoot me now.  Not that I’m a young adult, but still.  Moving further down the page, “SNC bribery probe widens to Algeria”.  Not exactly cheerful, either.

So then I checked the index, to get an idea of what I had to look forward to, inside the paper.  Not much, as it turned out. “Montreal’s mayor declares he is not under investigation after a raid at City Hall by anti-corruption police.”  “Ottawa’s new ambassador of religious freedoms is at risk of being marginalized by Foreign Affairs, an expert warns”.

Jumping for joy yet?  NOT!

“Former US. congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., the son of the famous civil-rights leader, pleads guilty to spending $750,000 in campaign funds in personal luxuries.  “A day after home crowds booed the team off the ice, the Buffalo Sabres