Bibliotherapy is premised on the idea that books can be healing tools. It can occur in individual or group settings, though the main distinction is between clinical bibliotherapy, where texts, including fiction and nonfiction, are recommended by a clinical therapist, and nonclinical bibliotherapy, as practised by a facilitator such as a librarian. Though not a stand-alone clinical practice in Canada, clinical bibliotherapy is a method used by professionals who already have certification in counselling, therapy, and clinical therapy and want to help patients seeking an additional outlet. Nonclinical bibliotherapy can’t replace professional help for patients with mental illnesses; instead, it is often used in conjunction with other forms of clinical therapy.
Cheu, based in Sudbury, Ontario, first learned of bibliotherapy during his undergraduate degree, when he came across English professor Joseph Gold’s Read For Your Life, which outlines the benefits of bibliotherapy. In fact, the British-born Gold is widely credited with bringing bibliotherapy to Canada. Cheu began working under Gold during his master’s at the University of Waterloo and later wrote his PhD thesis on James Joyce and the art of Zen, applying principles of Buddhism to his analysis of the Irish writer’s works. He eventually became Gold’s assistant, joining him in sessions with clients in his private practice. Books, Cheu says, provide a safely cocooned space inside which people can unearth painful and sometimes repressed feelings.
The James Webb Space Telescope, also known as the JWST, finally launched on December 25 for its journey 930,000 miles from Earth. This is the next generation that will replace the famous Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been capturing awesome photos for over 30 years, but it's time for something better. The JWST will be tasked with using its infrared sensors to explore some of the most distant and hard-to-see parts of the sky, helping with the search for exoplanets and with exploring the earliest days of the universe. So this seems like a good time to go over the most important scientific concepts that relate to space telescopes.
Settling in to review Phil Rosenzweig’s absorbing new book about a screenwriter and his movie, Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men, the first thing I did was download the film, long a favorite of mine, on Apple TV, for an umpteenth rewatch. Watching it this way had an ahistorical appropriateness, in part because Rose was first and always a television writer, and the movie was first produced in that medium in 1954 on the anthology series Studio One, but mainly because several aspects of its cinematic punch might just come off better on the small screen: the forcefulness, for instance, of director Sidney Lumet’s plentiful, crafty close-ups, and the dramatic claustrophobia of the jury room in which the whole movie, in effect, takes place.
But something else, entirely unpredictable, added irony and, in the long run, meaning to my having a fresh look: I happened to do so on the day of Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, at once deservedly infamous, at least in my bubble. If ever there were a movie to jolt you, assuming real-life events haven’t already done so, into a critical engagement with the pros and cons of our justice system, particularly as pertains to juries, it’s this movie, released to acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, albeit to disappointingly small audiences, in 1957.
Herons are bigger than egrets, though they have the same long legs.
My father said one with an eight-foot wingspan flew over his boat.
I would like to be shadowed by something that big. It would seem