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Nora Ephron, 1941-2012 |
Far more clever and eloquent writers than I am have discussed the loss of Nora Ephron at great lengths and I am not going to try to put my two cents' worth in other than to urge you to seek out and read the best of the bunch. However, one of the sites I came across while I was doing exactly that - seeking out tributes to Nora Ephron - was Lists of Note, which is a sort of "sister site" of Letters of Note (which, in turn, is a site I link to in the right-hand column of this blog). Appearing on that Lists of Note site on Wednesday was a terrific post entitled "What I Won't And Will Miss", two lists that Nora Ephron put together and used to close her 2010 book, "I Remember Nothing". These lists (of things Ms. Ephron would and would not miss when she was dead) fascinated me and I have spent the past 24 hours or so pondering what I would include on similar lists of my own. Now, unlike Nora Ephron when she compiled these thoughts, I am not staring down my imminent mortality; nevertheless, I've decided to post my own lists, which are not nearly as elegant as hers, here on this blog and I fervently hope that you will use the comment area to provide lists, snippets of lists or just one or two things that you will miss, or not so much, when you have shuffled off this mortal coil. I would be very interested indeed to read those comments and I hope this becomes my most-interactive blog post yet. But even if I am shouting into the wilderness, here are my two lists.
What I Won't Miss
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This covers more than one item on my list |
Racism, homophobia, misogyny, or any other of the myriad ways human beings can find to hate and oppress one another
Reality TV
Willful ignorance
Politics
Organized Religion
Fundamentalists
Big Business
Don Cherry
Mosquitoes
Humidity
Nickelback
In fact, all bad music
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Just this picture alone gives me stress |
Smoking (all around me; I've never smoked)
Internet trolls
Traffic
Bad pet owners (not owners of bad pets)
Telemarketers
Good people dying young
Ordinary people dying young
Soccer
Banks
Credit card companies
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A Surf Scoter covered in oil credit: Brocken Inaglory |
Greed
Environmental destruction
Child abuse
Spousal abuse
Elder abuse
Abuse
Umpires and referees
Stupidity
Uncomfortable silences
What I Will Miss
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A three-for-one deal |
Skating on an outdoor rink under a full moon
Full moons
The moon in any phase
The smell and sound of the ocean
Root beer
Root beer floats
Ice cream
Debussy's Claire de Lune
The Laurentians
The north shore of Lake Superior
The Canadian Shield
Road trips
Rocky the sock monkey |
Cryptic crosswords
Anti-gravity chairs
Sock monkeys
Breaking Bad
The Rudolph special every Christmas
Every Christmas
Snow
Coaching
Babies and baby animals
Short-track speedskating
Cellos
Spanish
Cookies
Saying the word "cookies"
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Calvin & Hobbes desktop wallpaper |
Baseball in the spring
Burying my face in the soft belly of a favourite pet
The changing of the seasons
The smell of coffee brewing on a Sunday morning
Billie Holiday
Thunderstorms
The National Film Board of Canada
The smell of freshly-cut grass
Calvin and Hobbes
Logic and reason
Comfortable Silences
I also agreed with virtually everything Nora Ephron put on her two lists; again, please take a look at them if you haven't already.
And now it's your turn. What would you miss? What would you rather be free of? I don't care if your lists are the complete opposites of my lists: bring them on!
Wouldn't Miss:
ReplyDelete-crowded subways
-itches you can't reach
-eggplant
-the horrible feeling that you've forgotten something when going away on a trip
Would Miss:
-creme caramel
-walking barefoot on grass
-the satisfaction of solving a difficult problem
-the people I love
Excellent. Thanks, Sarah! Who's next?
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