Paula Dunning Posts

This post is a thoughtful warning to those interacting with young adult children or grandchildren. The word “telephone” is no longer in use. If you didn’t know that, you—like me—may become an object of derision. It seems “phone” is still acceptable, though more as a noun than a verb. To…

I’ve just spent a delightful couple of evenings with my dad, who’s been dead for the last 35 years. No, not a séance. A collection of letters he wrote over a three-year period in the 1960s. So for the second post in a row, I’m writing about Dad—in part because…

I’ve had this photo in my memory for a long time, but I never had a copy of it. It still hangs in the Lemont, Pennsylvania post office. At a recent family gathering, we ended up chatting about my dad and his role in securing a new post office for…

Yesterday we took what may be this year’s last hike through the woods. It was the revival of a hiking weekend tradition established with friends some years ago but abandoned the last few years due to aching backs, newly replaced joints, and general malaise. This year, we were all in…

May… The worn deck boards are splintered and rotting in places—too far gone to bother with the semi-annual coat of stain. Parts of the deck are twenty years old, parts even older— evolved over the past forty-six years from a small entrance landing to a sprawling, wrap-around deck. The various…

On November 10, 2016, along with many Canadians, I vowed that I would not set foot in the U.S. as long as the current president remained in office. Since then, until last week, I had crossed the border just once, to visit a friend who lives just across the river…

A few weeks ago, I bit the proverbial bullet and sent a collection of personal essays off to an editor for some advice. I’m imagining a book. My main question—aside from the perennial “are these as worthless as they seem to me as I am hitting the ‘send’ button?”—was whether…

“Are kitchen stoves going the way of the sewing machine?“ That was a headline in a recent Globe and Mail opinion piece by Sylvain Charlebois. Apparently, in order to make condos more affordable in cities like Toronto, where housing prices are astronomical, builders are reducing them to the size of a…

I’m not averse to technology. Actually, I depend on it. But I am averse to self-promotion. I fret about being obnoxious, too in-your-face. I don’t want to annoy people. So I tremble before the mountains of advice for authors about how to promote their work online, and I almost always turn…

Water, water, see the water flow…Oh wizard of changes, teach me the lesson of flowing. The Water Song, Incredible String Band It’s a lesson I’m still struggling with, perhaps now more than ever. Although I have become an enthusiastic apologist for denial, reality leaps into my consciousness from time to…

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” ― Oscar Wilde No doubt most of you have encountered those annoying, cloying memes that urge you…

When we returned from Mexico to our northern Ontario home two and a half weeks ago, a bit earlier than usual, we were warned: gloat—or complain— and you’ll put your lives at risk. It’s been a brutal winter here. My other half had to bite his tongue, but not me.…

A few days ago I read a newspaper column about the joy of grocery shopping and its potential—or perhaps inevitable—demise in the era of big boxes and Amazon. The author conflated roaming the cereal aisle with roaming the savannah in search of breakfast, and she lauded the casual exchanges with…

I had a little love affair with a word yesterday before I was jilted by a tilde. After taking a few years off, I am once again taking Spanish lessons here in our winter city of Guanajuato, Mexico. It’s tricky for me to know what it is I need. On…