And what that is is I imagine explaining a work of art to my grandmother in five minutes, and if I can't explain it in five minutes, then it's too obtuse and it hasn't been refined enough yet.

I didn't want to tell my grandmother about it because I was scared I'd get in trouble for playing somewhere I shouldn't have been.

As I read my stories to my elderly grandmother, I was struck by how much she enjoyed them, but also how closely these stories resembled Cree stories once they were read aloud in Cree.

Why reject the improvements that human ingenuity has provided to us? I have an old fountain pen that belonged to my grandmother it s a nice memento of her, but I wouldn t dream of using it to write this column.