People's Climate March

King of Brobdingnag on the British people (based on Gulliver's description): "I cannot but conclude the bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth"--Gulliver's Travels

Yesterday afternoon I was in the People's Climate March.  We started at Allen Gardens and ended up west of Nathan Phillips Square.  A big First Nations drum led the procession and when they stopped to play it at Queen and University I was one of a group who joined hands in a circle and danced around it!

Last night I went to a Poetry Meetup at the Bampot tea room with an open mike. (I ordered a peppermint Nanaimo bar.) I was reckless enough to go second, and read aloud the first eighteen stanzas of my translation of Camoes' Lusiadas, which I'd read at the last Reading Out Loud Meetup.  There were several Palestinian-Canadians there.

The latest documentary series I've been watching on Acorn TV is Empire of the Tsars, about Russia's Romanov dynasty.

The other night I dreamed of a family movie with Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as the father.  When there was this scene with a teenage son going through an elaborate piercing and tattooing process, I wanted out.  I tried to leave the movie studio, but chose a door that was only for people coming in. (Last night I dreamed of imagining what would happen if Cinderella came to the ball dressed as a prince!)

For about a decade starting in January, 2003, I wrote in paper diaries. (I started out whimsically addressing them to a non-existent tweener girl called Dinah, but soon dropped that.)  I was thinking that in 2018 I'd start republishing them in a "15 Years Ago Today" blog like this one. [I'd also add some contemporary notes in brackets like these]