Paula Dunning Posts

Really, I wasn’t. The Stuff of a Life HAS been published, and I am currently waiting for an order of books to show up here to be sold locally. But for some reason, it is not showing up on Amazon, so I’ve been putting off an announcement until I could…

I’ve announced the upcoming publication of my collection of essays—The Stuff of a Life—so often that you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s all a hoax. Sometimes I think that myself. Life has interfered, it’s true. But my courage has waned as well. The book will be published by Embajadoras Press,…

I’ve been proofreading what I truly hope is the last “examination copy” of my new book, a collection of essays I’m calling The Stuff of a Life. It’s a bit boring, to tell the truth. The proofreading—I hope not the book. I wrote it, revised it, edited it, re-read it, re-revised…

It was an intriguing fact about him, this young man who seemed interested in me. His middle name was Alcott. He was a direct descendent of Louisa May Alcott on his mother’s side. I was, indeed, impressed, having been raised on Little Women.  Later, it turned out, the connection was less direct.…

I know, I know. I’ve said it quite a few times over the past couple of years. But this time it’s true. My long-promised essay collection is coming out soon. One more examination copy to check for missed typos and minor errors, and then it will be available from Amazon…

My basement door is an old, farmhouse door that opens from a small entry porch, which was intended to be the back entrance to the house but is the only one we’ve ever used. The basement (aka cellar) door looks welcoming enough, but you probably don’t want to go there..…

Just this morning I put the finishing touches on a holiday blog post that struggled to say anything festive given the general state of the world. Climate disasters, failing democracies, plague and pestilence, not to mention personal loss. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. I tried to…

My blog is back up–thanks to the help of my great-nephew-in-law. I guess that’s what he is. His name is Phillip and I’m very grateful for his patience and expertise! I had intended to blog regularly during my month in Guanajuato, where I spent all of October dealing with the…

In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being green.” I’ve been doing some touch-up painting on our camp/cottage on Lake Superior. It feels a bit like a visual game of whisper-down-the-alley. You remember that game—where the first player whispers something in the ear of the second…

I don’t remember the exact moment it dawned on me, but I do remember an awareness in middle childhood of the extraordinary improbability of being me. Who I was, where I was. In my only concrete memory, I am sitting on a friend’s front porch—I was probably about eleven—and asking…

In the last months, I have found myself developing little rituals to fill the spaces that used to be filled by companionship. A brief good morning to the person who isn’t there on the other side of the bed. A first cup of coffee in the living room, as before,…

Exactly 56 years ago, the world’s attention was on Selma, Alabama. The issue was voter registration. Sadly, here we are again. But this is a retrospective post, so I’ll leave comments on the current state of affairs in the US for those who are living them. In 1965, both Jack…

In what seems a lifetime ago, I served nearly two decades as a trustee on the tiny board of education serving the rural area east of Sault Ste. Marie. At some point midway through that time, the board received a proposal – or maybe it was a provincial directive –…

Almost four years ago, I wrote that I did not want this blog to become a “cancer blog”, and it didn’t. I also don’t want it to become a “grief blog”, and it won’t. But today marks exactly three months since Jack died, and I feel compelled to recognize that.…

A note from a frustrated author. No matter how hard I try or how many hours–yes, hours–I spend trying to incorporate text and photos in a more imaginative way, I fail. What looks perfect in draft form morphs into chaos when posted. Is it possible that I will have to…

A month or so ago I wrote a poem. Poetry is not my forte, and I won’t embarrass myself by sharing it. But the gist of it was that, even as I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was coming by imagining Jack gone, I knew that when…

I’ve never been good at carefully following world events that don’t feel are either close to me or earth-shattering. I read the headlines and have a sense of where the action is, but I skim over the details. Of course, I’m often wrong about the global impact what’s happening in,…

What makes life worth living? For me, that question was the most important take-away from Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal—a must-read for anyone who is aging or has aging parents. And it’s a question that is increasingly on my mind. According to Gawande, it’s also a question that every physicians should ask…