I am conflicted about this family heirloom

World’s first womb transplant planned.

Eva Ottosson, 56, has agreed to take part in a groundbreaking new medical procedure, which if successful could see her donate her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter Sara.

Doctors hope if the transplant is successful Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, could become pregnant and carry a child in the same womb from which she herself was born.

“She needs the womb and if I’m the best donor for her… well, go on. She needs it more than me. I’ve had two daughters so it’s served me well.”

take a penny, leave a penny

I <3 commercial drive

I recently stumbled upon a guerrilla back alley library about a block away from my apartment. It was full of odd titles, mostly romance novels and soviet tracts, but sprinkled liberally with terrible summer beach books, too, the sort you buy at the airport for the flight then never read again. I borrowed a copy of The Third Policeman and left behind A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six, one of my favourite books from early childhood. If you would also like to donate, or even just browse, it can be found in the alley between Francis and Pender, a half block west of Commercial Drive.

setting, the scene

An excerpt from the journal of Metrocentric:

Across from the pub, an office building, presenting to us its side elevation. A column of windows, about half a dozen in height.

In many workplaces people making or taking calls on their mobile phones will leave their desks and make their way to a more anonymous part of the building: a corridor, a stairway, a lift lobby. There they stand and shuffle as they speak – if there is a window they will typically look out of it for all or part of the call.

It was that part of the afternoon in which anyone going back to the office would have done so, and the post-work clientele had yet to appear. I was drinking Bombardier, because he got the first round in and he can’t ask for lager, he says.

Every now and then a face and torso would appear at one of the windows opposite. At one point there were four. Four in a row. “Connect Four!”, I remarked. All this was happening behind him.

Once, when all four fully presented themselves at the window, and none were crouched into themselves in their phone calls, and two were gesticulating, the sun came out; the light fell on all four. The squares of window stood out against the dark concrete. It was like looking at a grand opera stage set: they could have flung the glass aside and burst into song.