Award-winning journalist and author Penney Kome has published six non-fiction books and hundreds of periodical articles, as well as writing a national Canadian column for 12 years and a local (Calgary) column for four years. Her books include Somebody Has To Do It: Whose Work Is Housework? (McClelland &Stewart 1982); The Taking of Twenty-Eight: Women Challenge the Constitution (Women’s Educational Press, 1983); and Peace: A Dream Unfolding (Sierra Club Books 1986).
For more information, see Penney Kome’s page at the Writer’s Union of Canada.
Penney Kome’s column in F&O is Over Easy. Recent columns:
Climate watch: the world cannot afford a war
War, the most costly and damaging human activity, is outside the scope of Paris climate talks. “If the war was ranked as a country in terms of emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world’s nations do annually, more than 60 percent of all countries, said one report.
Unpacking the backpack of Christian privilege
So Starbucks has won 2015’s first “War On Christmas” prize, by offering seasonal red, green and white paper coffee cups that some evangelicals deem not Christmasy enough. And it’s only the beginning of November!
Justin Trudeau’s speech to his kids
Canada’s newly-elected prime minister got Penney Kome thinking about George Lakoff’s research on differences between the “conservative” view and the assumption of “progressives” that “the world is basically good and can be made better.”
Big news! The Ashley Madison website lied, and 35 million men fell for it. Married men who told themselves they were willing to risk everything for a quick guilt-free fling, now find out just how much they’ve risked. Two suicides might be linked to the hack! That’s dramatic. That bleeds, so that story leads. But there’s another story here too. Women avoided Ashley Madison like the plague. They not only spotted the duplicity, they rejected the premise.
Iran, nuclear waste, and Fukushima
Unfortunately, one thing that two years of US+5 negotiations with Iran did not achieve is to remove the most urgent nuclear threat to the world, The world still contends with every scrap of radioactive nuclear waste generated since Enrico Fermi’s first controlled chain reaction in 1942 – some 250,000 glowing toxic tons of used fuel alone.
On wanting to fit in and Rachel Dolezal
I had no idea that braids had any social implications when I was in kindergarten. I just wanted to fit in. We moved and I transferred out of that school soon anyway. But I was wearing my hair in braids when the civil rights movement came along 10 years later, and indeed until I reached middle age. These memories re-surfaced when the bizarre Rachel Dolezal story broke.
Canada’s Famous Five would be proud
The swearing-in of new Alberta premier Rachel Motley was a family affair, in the capacious park that fronts the province’s legislature. Crowds roared as the first woman premier was sworn in, to lead the province where Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung fought for the vote a century ago.
Mature babes: Granny admirers more overt in the UK (Paywall)
Stepping up to the line to throw my three darts, I sank into my sideways stance and studied the score and the dartboard. From the corner of my eye, I saw an older man squirming appreciatively in his bentwood chair, his hand around a pint of bitters. He was giving me the eye. That hasn’t happened much since I let my hair go gray. I stood up and looked around, confused. Then I sank again, and not only did the first guy squirm, so did the fellow at the next table. I wondered if my husband was watching.
Convocation at the University of Alberta was a bittersweet occasion for at least one family. Yielding to parental pressure to attend the graduation ceremony, our son the graduate irreverently considered adding a bright duct tape debt message to his mortar board: $47K. That’s the accumulated debt from a basic part-time seven-year Bachelor of Arts, not the fees to earn a medical or law degree.