So, tomorrow night is Earth Hour and being the little ecobunny that I am, I would feel wrong not to mention it here. This is not going to be one of those scary doom and gloom “the world is ending” tirades though, promise! Continue reading

When I first returned from Ireland, I worked as an English teacher in what would euphemistically be called a “previously disadvantaged” community. I don’t know so much about the “previously” part of that pat little phrase – think kids casually doing orals about the domestic violence in their very own homes, and classrooms so packed that every time I turned around to explain a concept, whatever I had just written on the board was rubbed off by my back. It saddened me that these young people had made their way almost to the end of their schooling career and could still barely read and write in English. Getting a (small) handful of them to fall in love with Shakespeare, or at least start to understand his work, was a huge accomplishment. Continue reading

My post on nostalgia on Friday got me to thinking about childhood and its various influences. And when you’re one half of a set of sisters, it’s impossible to think about childhood without thinking about the nature of sisterhood. Those of you who have sisters (and are sisters, since I think the brother-sister relationship is a whole different ball game) will perhaps agree that this dynamic is both complex and ever-changing, but ultimately carved in our hearts with a delicate pattern that makes us who we are. Continue reading

Nostalgia is a strange phenonemon.  For me at least, that bittersweet flooding of the senses can be brought on by the  most arbitrary of things.  There are certain sounds, sights, smells and tastes that are guaranteed to send you hurtling back to a particular place in time.  A kind of bizarre deja vu in reverse. Continue reading

A few people have asked me “why Girl from Mars?” It’s not just because I love Ash (though I really really do).
A couple of years ago, I got to thinking about the blurring of gender roles, and in keeping with the ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ analogy, the way we seem to have swapped planets. Now, I like kittens and cupcakes and boys as much as the next girl, so me being a girl from Mars is not about being ‘manly’. Rather, it’s about the way a lot of men seem to have embraced more traditionally ‘feminine’ roles, while women seem quite content to be more independent and fend for themselves.
Continue reading

So, here we are.  My lovely friend Connor decided to make this website for me, and now I am at a loss for things to talk about.  An unusual event by any account.  But since I’m fairly sure he’s the only one reading this for now, I won’t panic and will ease into things.  Pace myself for once and all that.

Continue reading