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Podcast I loved this week's episode of This American Life... These are short paragraphs-long stories, Ira Glass says… and yet how powerful the humble paragraph! As a tutor, I often encourage students to look at paragraph-construction tips, because, in academic writing, they can follow a pattern: make a point, have examples to develop the point, conclude the thought and lead to the next point. On This American Life, guest Etgar Keret shared pieces of his mother's character and turned paragraphs about her into art.

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Music Tom Allen's CBC programme "About Time" featured "Oqiton" by Jeremy Dutcher. The song is based on a wax cylinder recording of a Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik) song, in a language that had (then) long been outlawed. It's beautiful and haunting.

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Deodorant Megababe has a slew of products and I'm two weeks into daily application of "The Smoothie Deo" post "Space Bar Underarm Soap" lathering, rinsing, drying. I smell good, even at the end of a busy day wearing heat-tech turtlenecks. Natural products make one feel extra lady-like when they work because they exude environmentalist virtue perhaps... Wearing something that smells like a chocolate filling (coconut, lime and bilberry) feels lighter than applying men's extra-strength antiperspirant, even though, to be clear, aluminium is fine and detoxing one's armpits is a dubious exercise.

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Food I made Refrigerator Bran Muffins, the idea of this recipe being that the batter can be safely kept in the refrigerator for weeks so that, for weeks, you can treat yourself to freshly-made muffins with little prep. For my mother-in-law, I baked them all at once. The recipe made 44 muffins, and I learned you don't need to fill the empty wells of a muffin tin with water.

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Winnipeg Scenery This week's weather brought nice temperatures and cloudy-grey mornings. Enzo and I tramp through the well-tramped Henteleff trail along the river. Wildlife makes itself scarce, but everywhere, there are traces of its presence... An abandoned nest in the bleached strands of grass;