How I Got Scammed

Posted on July 26, 2025 by doradueck

No excuses, but it was early and I was just beginning my coffee. I was checking my mail, my social feed. Checking to see what was new, and then I saw a post about an investment project by none other than Mark Carney, whom I happen to respect. Now I will admit that I skimmed rather than read it carefully, that my mind had immediately thought war or savings bonds, that type of thing, and what a good idea, thought I, and since I’ve been feeling especially patriotic in the last months on account of you-know-who (haven’t we all?) I clicked, and long story short, I was led to believe it was exactly as I’d supposed. And before I knew it I had joined the club and given my credit card number in the amount of $250 (U.S. I noticed later). I was passed from one person to another to “Patrick”, my personal minder, I guess you could call him. As soon as I gave up my number, I got a cell ping from my credit card company with a warning, and there were a few other red lights flashing by now, but to every fear and/or objection I raised came assurances as smooth and confident as maple syrup.

When “Patrick” asked my name, he exclaimed that, wow, his wife had just read my book, something about a hidden thing, right, an Amish story, right? “Mennonite” I said, still quite friendly, even though I was beginning, yes, to have doubts about everything. Half my brain told me he had simply googled my name and come up with this information, but the other half was, I’ll be honest, flattered, even kind of excited at this amazing coincidence, because his wife thought it was such a great book; she simply loved it! And somewhere along the way I must also have indicated that it wasn’t greed for returns that motivated me but patriotic idealism, for I had enough to live on, and by this time, I can also assume in retrospect, he calculated my age and thus knew I had some money in the bank. Worth fishing for.

Long story short, as I say, I did realize I’d been hooked for something that wasn’t what I thought it was, and now it was too late to get out of the credit card transaction. Shortly after, I wrote and said I’d felt pressured, I wanted out immediately. With apologies and cheer I was informed that yes, of course, they hadn’t meant that at all, and the next day I would find my deposit returned in full along with what I had already gained in one day. Which was truly there the next morning, with $100 “earned” on my “investment.” Wow, good returns, eh? But by now I knew they were just upping the bait. At any rate, I locked my credit card (and later cancelled it).

When “Patrick” said he would call the next day, I said he should do so at 11 a.m. I arranged to go over to my son’s place for that time (he was working at home). Ashamed, embarrassed, I explained the situation. He confirmed its scam-ishness. Then the phone rang. “Patrick.” I said Hello and handed the phone to my son. He gave “Patrick” a thorough scolding, for leading his mother along and all that. If he exaggerated my capacity (lack of, that is) a little, so be it; his vigorous defence of me felt good.

Although it ended well enough, there was still the mess to clean up. Once the transaction moved from “pending” to paid I did the dispute process,.The credit card assistant reminded me that I had freely given my number, but fortunately the transaction was successfully reversed. It may seem that I scammed the scammers, for technically I got back all I gave and more, but it’s not quite true, for my bank has bracketed that transfer and it will be investigated by their fraud department, so neither the bank nor I will be liable for receiving fraudulent funds. And it was such a huge hassle, cancelling my credit card, changing all my passwords, taking various other precautions, and my stomach was in turmoil for a couple of days until I felt innerly strong again.

I asked my son not to tell anyone about his mother’s foolishness and he agreed, but several days later he said, “Actually, you should talk about it.” He’s right. So I took his advice and have been compelled, like the penitential Ancient Mariner, to tell my tale to others. Sharing such stories and one’s vulnerabilities can be a mutual education. In the process I’ve heard of others’ follies and gained from their lessons.

But now I’ve told “the world” on my weblog so maybe it’s enough.

Otherwise I’m having a lovely summer, being extra careful on all fronts, no impulsive clicking, and the local hydrangea flowers are at their most glorious and the blackberries are a-ripening.

Ten Sentences about Mennonite/s Writing Ten

Posted on June 18, 2025 by doradueck

On the flight home from Winnipeg to Vancouver, I scan my notes and discover they’re so pathetically cryptic, they’ll be useless for saying anything meaningful about the conference sessions.
Nevertheless, I can state the facts: this was # 10 in a series of conferences called Mennonite/s Writing, held every 3 years or so, and this time at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, June 13-15, under the theme “Words at Work and Play.”
The conference happened against the news of nearly 300 dead in an Air India crash, Israel attacking Iran, ongoing National Guard/ICE craziness in Los Angeles, yet here we were, maybe 110 (?) of us, thinking and talking about writing, for in her keynote, Julia Spicher Kasdorf said her response to global concerns is to become more local, and these days, this was our local.
I really enjoyed the conference — the sessions and keynotes of course, but also the collegiality, the many conversations with old and new friends, a happy sense of belonging because even though I don’t label myself a “Mennonite writer” (what does that actually mean, never mind these regular gatherings trying to figure it out) I still know that in some real way this is my tribe and besides, they’ll have me, which is always a happy and satisfying thing.
The keynotes were highlights: Magdalene Redekop in an almost poetical trail of insights and juxtapositions on “translation” — a task we all take up in our lives — and David Waltner-Toews tackling “the meaning of everything” via science, that is, each of us “an unstable patchwork at our very core” yet interconnected, and Julia Spicher Kasdorf ruminating on Mennonite identity, noting “identity politics reduces complexity” and “identity work can wear a body out” yet calling us — stirringly — to commit to writing as practice and conversation.
I very rarely — honestly — notice what people are wearing, though there were several memorable, if minor, exceptions this time, for I glimpsed a well-known writer in his pyjamas in the residence hallway and I think they were blue and white, and Di Brandt wore a garland of (cloth?) red flowers and leaves on her head during her presentation, and my longtime friend Sarah Klassen looked classy in a neat, belted teal dress, but I do notice space and felt the conference metaphorically balanced by having parts in the aged, wood-toned ambience of the Great Hall and its connecting corridors and other parts in the newish light-filled Marpeck Commons.
Most of the sessions ran concurrently with others, which meant that every choice meant missing something else, but the personal program I selected began wonderfully with David Elias on his grandfather’s brother and Elsie K. Neufeld on her work as a personal historian and Linda Umble on reading Mennonite texts, and ended as wonderfully Sunday morning with three poets — Jeff Gundy, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Ann Hostetler — reading their work, and in between I presented too (“Thinking about Oneself: Desire and Discovery in the Personal Essay and Memoir”) alongside Mary Ann Loewen who gave a memoir talk about herself and her granddaughter, both of which went well, we thought, and provoked some good discussion..
A good number of younger people attended, and some presented, as in a session I attended featuring readings by Joelle Kidd, James Bergman, and Geoff Martin (whom I had “met” before, in a manner of speaking, when essays we’d written sat side-by-side in The New Quarterly — his was the winning one!) and it was great to hear new and younger voices in the mix.
On the Thursday evening before the conference began, In Search of a Mennonite Imagination, edited by Robert Zacharias, containing key texts in Mennonite literary criticism, was launched at McNally Robinson Booksellers and I bought it, all 700+ significant pages of it, and later some other books besides, not as many as I may have wished but more than I could carry in my full backpack, but then a friend who lives in the next town over kindly offered to transport some of them, including the massive tome, in his luggage.
The conference included an optional “literary tour” of Steinbach, which I selected to do, and it was interesting to see places associated with writers such as Miriam Toews and Patrick Friesen and ended with a delicious faspa at the Mennonite museum, where my final “Mennonite” sight of the weekend was a sculpture of the famous Dirk Willems story, which makes me wonder — in terms of two words Julia Spicher Kasdorf set against each other — whether it represented, and could be told, as “continuity” rather than “rupture.”

Thinking about arches

Posted on May 23, 2025 by doradueck

I like arches. I’ve been thinking about them–their sense of invitation and transition. The way they frame what’s ahead. I don’t mean famous arches like L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris or the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. but simple arches I’ve encountered.

This first one is created by trees meeting over a path to the dike I often walk, and just beyond it is View–of the bay, which is sometimes beautifully spread with water and sometimes, when the tide is low, less beautifully spread with mud.

The next is also local, also of greenery. Enter this portal and you’ll be in a peaceful, quiet Tsawwassen place of trees, flowers, and plants called The Secret Garden.

And I love detouring through this one on my way to the library. It’s structural, yes, between two parts of a condo building but leads to a large reflective pool with koi.

I have a few favourites from travels. First one is in Turkey, one arch opening to another. It seems both holy and mysterious. Second, somewhere in Europe, Freiburg I think (and don’t you just want to go through and around the corner to that street?) Third is in Central Park, New York. The ceiling nearly grabs all the attention but there, at the end, three arches, stairs, and light.

And as metaphor? In the ordinary, daily life? For me a book or story is like an arch that summons me into another place. The exercise of gratitude is an arch as frame around the day’s happenings. Any shift of thought or action that leads me toward a different, perhaps wondrous view or next steps is an arch to go through gladly.