Denise Choppin

olfaction

A Whiff of Nonanal — Or Why You Should Hang Your Laundry in the Sunshine

I first acquired a dryer, meaning a clothes drying machine, in 2005; but only because I inherited one. Used less than ten times in almost 20 years, I just don’t see the necessity. If the weather is completely dreadful, as in snowing or raining, I hang up the laundry

self help

Toxic Positivity : The Dark Face of Positive Thinking

A Facebook friend recently shared a “positive” meme, and it just kept bothering me. Aside from the saccharine wording and facile sentiment, I find there is a deeper, highly insidious and profoundly negative thought pattern under the surface. The post appeared on a Facebook page with over 33 million followers,

tree, trees, nature

The Oldest Tree in Mississauga

Although there might be an older tree in town, the white oak tree growing just off Clarkson Road North is likely the most ancient. Indeed, it is so old that it was designated as a Provincial Park! According to various sources, the typical lifespan of this particular type of white

savant

Islands of Genius in a Sea of Ordinary Life

In the 5th hour of the 5th day of the 5th month of the 5th year of this new millennium my mother died. Perhaps she was making it easy for me to remember. Nonetheless, she would have liked the numerical symmetry of it. Her interior or innate wiring was a

Lake Lacuna

Sometimes they call it “brain fog”, or that the word one forgets is “on the tip of the tongue”. Some envision their brain as a huge repository of files, storing all sorts of information and that, for the moment, they can’t find the file. I conjure something different. Like

family history

Strangers on a Train; Or How I Met Your Father

Looking back, I now see that trains and train stations have been a constant backdrop in my life — hours of commuting to high school, travelling to and from university, going to visit my parents when we lived in different regions of Italy. It was on one of these trips from

scopa

750 Hours on a Train

Living in northern Italy in the late 1970s I would take a commuter train every morning, at 5 or 6 AM, and ride just under two hours from Treviso to Vicenza, where I was attending high school. I was 16 or 17 years old at the time. Each morning, painfully

books

Help Wanted

A few people worked in the bookshop with me. My first assistant was a university student who was studying psychology. Friendly, smart, upbeat, responsible, computer savvy… she was wonderful and of course didn’t last. Once she got her degree, off she went and good for her! A later employee

toilets

Close Encounters of the Third Kind of Facilities

Moving to Europe in my early teens was an enormous transition. In the 1970s we were not living in a “global village”, and things still varied tremendously from country to country. One significant adjustment that was required every day — indeed, multiple times daily — was using the toilet. Such a universal

Closing Time

The bookshop generally closed later on Friday evenings, at 7:00 rather than 6:00 PM. In the summer it was still full daylight, but in winter it was completely dark outside by then. I don’t know why I stayed open so late. Perhaps I did so because some

Michael Who Chose Not to Be

Recently my 8-year-old granddaughter asked why I don’t have any brothers or sisters. An easy or difficult question to answer, depending on how philosophical or “historically” accurate you choose to be. In truth, I might have had an older brother, or at least for a very brief moment in

The Little People of the Credit River

Who knows if they are still among us? The Anishinaabeg of Mississauga believed the Credit River was home to a group of tiny people — we night think of them as elves, sprites, spirits, little people — that they called the Mamagwasewug. Part of the folklore of many tribes, the Mamagwasewug were

The Orcolat: Pink Floyd, the Ogre, and the Real Voice of the Quake

The earthquake in Northern Italy happened on May 6, 1976, at exactly 9 PM. Later major aftershocks occurred on the 11th and 15th of September. I was there and will always remember. Not at the epicenter, but certainly well within the range where the earthquake was felt. But first a

Lions Made of Fish and Shit

On either side of the bottom of the steps leading up to the Duomo of Treviso in the Veneto Province of northeastern Italy, lie two salmon-pink lions. They are made of fish and shit. No one knows who sculpted these beasts. They date from the Romanesque period, likely created sometime

Review: Julia

"Julia": A story in Pentimento by Lillian Hellman Pentimento is a wonderful memoir of recollections written by Lilliam Hellman (1905-1984), the famous playwright and screenwriter. Each story has a lazy, lyrical quality with characters drawn from her past, including long-time companion Dashiel Hammett (of Maltese Falcon fame). The

Come for Jesus, stay for the Victorian Smut....

I don’t remember her name, but I do remember her. Let’s call her ‘Susan’. A second-hand bookshop tends to attract unusual characters. Sometimes I felt like a bartender without alcohol involved. People seem to have the notion that a bookshop (particularly the small second-hand type) is a place

Shakespeare's Facebook Rant

Let's have some fun with Shakespeare, Hamlet, and Facebook Ah, to post or not to post, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Facebook comments Or to write a reply against a sea of troubles And

Desert

In the early 1980s I lived in a small town in southern New Mexico called Alamogordo. I had a job that required my going to Chino, California, at least once or twice a month, which entailed having to drive two hours through the desert to get a plane in El

The Oldest Thing in the Room

It was a cool October morning as I walked along the northern shore of Lake Ontario picking up a few rocks that caught my eye. They were not particularly beautiful or exceptional in any obvious way, yet I brought them home. I contacted some rock and mineral enthusiasts that I

The Measure of a Man

There is a poignant quote from a Star Trek TNG episode entitled "The Measure of a Man". In this story, Data is threatened with being deconstructed by a Star Fleet scientist in order to theoretically enable the creation of more Data-like androids. There is risk in the procedure

Wasteland

During some tidying, I found a book that contained a poem I wrote in 1972 (more than 50 years ago!) when I was a teenager. Pensive, pretentious, questioning, yet perceived as superficial. I wonder what she was really like — that girl who used to be me. Little did she know

Confessions of a Failed Nerd

Patchwork Quilts and a Patchwork Career I should have been a career nerd. I should have been someone who worked in science, or research, or medicine, or something scholarly. Instead, I ended up with a crazy patchwork “career”, doing mostly pointless tasks for pointless companies. A quiet child with no

Queen Elizabeth Way over the Credit River Bridge

Not the Queen you Think! Many think that the Queen Elizabeth Way was named after Queen Elizabeth II, but that is not so.

Jelly jams preserves cooking crabapples apples

Crabapple Jelly

A few years ago our crabapple tree was languishing, as was a nearby tree that I had raided in the past. However, our newest neighbour on the street had two crabapples that were just groaning with the weight of all the fruit. I decided that it would be a good

Mervyn Peake, poetry, Gormenghast

Poetry in Gormenghast

I recently re-read this little gem, a small segment from Titus Groan, the first volume of the Gormenghast Trilogy written by Mervyn Peake in 1946. It's an odd fantasy and the plot is hard to describe succinctly. I've always loved the book (only the first one,