I am, I think, a rather typical middle-class urban dweller. I live not far from the buzzing downtown core, in the leafy, historic Annex, perched like a sparrow on top of the coursing powerline of the Bloor-Danforth subway. I cross the city each day on the TTC. I take advantage of the eclectic smorgasbord of food the city has to offer. I go to the museums and the literary events and the street festivals, take advantage (if not for granted) the wonderful variety of shops. But I think what makes me urban is not so much those things, but a mentality. A sort of frenetic activity, physically and mentally. Perhaps it’s the number of options, perhaps it’s the lights and noise of a city that never sleeps, but I think more likely it’s just my own overachieving nature mixed up with the realities of being a driven twenty-something building a career and taking on more than is advisable. And while I love my life, find it full and engaging and challenging, there is a part of me that worries that in taking on so much I’m missing out. That in engaging with everything I’m actually processing nothing. That in the [...]
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My earliest childhood memory is of sitting in a circle of peas in my parents’ backyard garden. The memory is bright, leafy green shot through with sunshine — somehow overexposed, like real memories often are. Even now, I can still feel the lingering warmth of that summertime encirclement. Happy but humble beginnings. Almost 25 years later, I’m finding my way back to that garden. It started last summer, when, with the determined change that follows a break-up, I decided I would grow things. Lacking a garden and inspired by Gayla Trail, I assembled some pots, a few seeds and seedlings, and I let the planting begin. (I wrote a post about it, finally understanding Thoreau’s wonder at growing beans.) When those first sprouts emerged, I felt a sense of awe at this miraculous yet mundane event unfurling before me. It was a feeling long forgotten, lost sometime after that pea circle and my sickly yogourt cup bean plant in my early primary days. My budding fascination was unexpectedly nourished by my father, who, until recently, had taken a gardening hiatus similar to my own. But in the last few years, he has picked up his spade once more, and bragged about [...] It’s Day 31 of the extended April that is our Keep Toronto Reading campaign, and the videos are still coming! The ridiculously smart and impossibly cool Bronwyn Kienapple offers an impassioned plea for you read Antonia Fraser’s memoir of love and the lit scene Must You Go?:
Bronwyn Kienapple is the Online Marketing Coordinator at Penguin Canada and has written for EYE Weekly and Canadian Notes and Queries. She’s often raving about books on Twitter as @B_Kienapple.  |
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