Subscribe Now!
World Food Day
There are serious approaches a person could take to World Food Day, but one of my ongoing aims in life is to be less earnest in my writing. (Hard when my best ideas for books lately seem to be about serious stuff.) So on this WFD, instead of blogging about world hunger, genetically modified foods, or…
Read More...The Up Side of Email
Sometimes I lament the time it takes to keep up with emails, as many people do these days. But I received a few recently that made me very glad for this way of connecting with people I might otherwise not hear from at all. Like this one: Hi Kathy!! I just bought and read your…
Read More...School Vegetable Gardens
The headline “An edible education” in the Toronto Star the other day (Nov 3) caught my eye. “Scarborough high school’s garden supplies cafeteria, inspires students and feeds community”. “It’s believed to be Canada’s first school-based market garden,” the article says. I wondered if that was true. Cornelia Oberlander has been encouraging kids to plant vegetable…
Read More...
When Our Book Club Meets in December
When my book group gathers in December, we break from our usual practice of discussing a book we’ve all read. One year I read aloud to the group a story from Rick Book’s Christmas in Canada. Another year we all brought a short Christmas story or poem that we liked. Last year we laughed along…
Read More...
A Gift that Really Keeps on Giving
Did you know that signing your donor card may not be enough to ensure that, in the event of your death, your usable organs and tissue will be donated to someone who needs them? The Canadian Society of Transplantation website provides information on steps you can take, wherever in Canada you live, to ensure that your…
Read More...Revisiting PIRDY a Year Later
During the last week of 2009, I devised a plan to help me give more time to activities I enjoy, but never seem to find enough time for. I called it The PIRDY Plan (P for Photography, I for Internet, R for Reading, D for Drawing, Y for Yoga. And I was in the plan…
Read More...
International Year of the Volunteer
According to Volunteer Canada, there are 12.5 million volunteers in this country, working to make a difference in their communities. The United Nations has declared 2011 the 10th International Year of the Volunteer. To help celebrate the impact volunteers make, the Toronto Association for Volunteer Administration has set an interesting goal: to collect 2011 images…
Read More...
A Volunteer-Reader’s Anniversary
Seven years ago this week, I began volunteering at the CNIB Recording Studio in Toronto – reading books and teching for others who are reading. In addition to magazine articles and chunks of various textbooks, (and the foreword to a book being read by a male narrator), I have read a wide range of books – for kids,…
Read More...
March Break Fun
So, with the kids home for March Break, what are you going to do to help keep them entertained? (Besides reading lots of Kathy Stinson books, of course!) Why not take inspiration from the open-face sandwiches pictured here? (Get it open face sandwiches?) These faces were created by various members of my extended family at the…
Read More...
Why did you want to be a writer?
I’ve loved reading books for longer than I can remember. (That’s me in the picture, reading in my gramma’s backyard.) As an adult, I started to wonder if I would like writing them, too. I wondered if I could write something that people who didn’t know me would like reading. I was almost 30 when…
Read More...