Charlotte Prong
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charlotteprong.bsky.social
Charlotte Prong
@charlotteprong.bsky.social
1.4K followers 710 following 1.1K posts
Retired journalist & comms pro, professional napper, your bff.
Probably reading.
Kitchener/Waterloo Region
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charlotteprong.bsky.social
Executives at my local public library are cutting jobs and devaluing librarians and other staff, and this book display reflects that 🔥 lol
#librarysky
(zoom in or check alt text for titles)
An image of a book display at the library. Books are face out and titles include: Tiny Traumas Snakes in Suits Jerks at Work Are You Being Bullied at Work Work Won’t Love You Back The Diversity Gap Bullshit Jobs The Asshole Survival Guide Stupidity Navigating a Toxic Workplace and others along that line. Image of text from an Instagram account called KW Rising: KITCHENER PUBLIC LIBRARY SHAKE-UP SPARKS BACKLASH LONGTIME KPL STAFF CUT AS LIBRARY "REORGANIZES" Kitchener Public Library has laid off staff and restructured departments for the first time in over 30 years. CEO Darren Solomon says it's about "modernizing," but the union calls it a major loss for community programs and expertise. Programmers dropped from 30+ to around 12. Departments like Children's Services were eliminated, and "library" was even removed from job titles. Management, meanwhile, has grown. Staff say the changes have weakened what made KPL special - its local, personal touch. Image from an Instagram account called KW Rising. It includes a photo of Kitchener Public Library’s central branch and the headline: Kitchener Public Library shake-up sparks backlash
November 10, 2025 at 4:57 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
We actually did win the World Series
Me wearing a vintage 1992 Blue Jays World Series sweatshirt
November 2, 2025 at 11:49 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
GAME 6 LET’S GOOOOOOO
Blue Jays!
Me at the Jays game holding a sign that says “Barger Banger for my birthday” Me at the game with my two daughters and two nieces. My sign says “1992 1993 2025 - Win it for Matt” and has a photo of Matt on it.
October 31, 2025 at 11:30 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Happy Halloween! 🎃
Matt, Elvis, and a witch, circa 2001.
Matt with a giant fake bloody bolt screwed into his forehead. One of my daughters, dressed like Elvis, is licking his face while my other daughter, dressed like a witch, leans away, laughing.
October 31, 2025 at 3:07 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
I’m so happy the Jays are going to the World Series and so sad Matt isn’t here to see it. He would have loved this.
💙⚾️💙
Me, Matt, Maggie and Bronwyn at a Jays game on Sept. 24th.
October 21, 2025 at 4:22 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Today is our anniversary. I spent more than half my life with Matt, and we loved each other very much, and he took such good care of me and our daughters.
I’ll love him and miss him forever and I still can’t believe he’s gone.
Matt stretched out on the couch in his pyjamas, reading. Matt and I, about 25 years ago. I’m leaning in to him and we’re both smiling. Matt and I kissing in front of a fireplace on our wedding day. He is wearing a kilt and sporran and I’m wearing an ivory lace dress. Matt looking very happy, in his happy place - wearing a Blue Jays hat and sweatshirt, sitting in his little fishing boat, and holding up a fish.
October 17, 2025 at 2:06 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Matthew Parkhill, my beloved husband, and father of Maggie and Bronwyn
1957-2025

💙 143

I’ll say more later but on this Thanksgiving weekend, I’m so grateful he was ours.
A tall man with a thick grey beard and glasses is standing in a boat and holding a massive pike. He’s got a big smile and he’s wearing his favourite T-shirt, which says “The Good Life” on it. His name is Matthew Parkhill and he was a wonderful person.
October 12, 2025 at 11:56 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
We splurged for once-in-a-lifetime TD Lounge seats at the Jays game last night and it was amazing
View of from the 4th row, just to the right of home plate, as Boston crushes the Jays 7-1
September 25, 2025 at 12:48 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
“Who goes Nazi” by Dorothy Thompson:
“the frustrated and humiliated intellectual”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goe...
Screenshot from Wikipedia article about the 1941 essay “Who Gies Nazi?” Thompson concludes that individuals most likely to go Nazi are those who are ruthless and cerebral, are embittered by their circumstances, are easily deceived, and/or would opportunistically seek to be close to power if Nazism was ascendant, summarizing that "the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success— they would all go Nazi in a crisis."
September 3, 2025 at 10:59 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Books I read in August, titles and authors in alt text.
Some good, some bad, some discombobulating

#booksky #litfic 💙📚💡
Photo of a stack of books: Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson The Billionaire Murders by Kevin Donovan
August 31, 2025 at 2:37 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
I support @cupescfp.bsky.social Air Canada flight attendants, who are only paid from the time the plane doors close until they open at the destination. Wage theft on a grand scale.
Since 2000, inflation has increased 169% and average full-time wages have increased 210% in Canada. But entry-level Air Canada flight attendants' wages have increased only 10% - just $3 per hour - in the past 25 years. Meanwhile, Air Canada flight attendants are not paid for a significant portion of their time on the job, including while they perform critical safety checks, attend to onboard medical and safety emergencies, and assist passengers with boarding and deplaning. "While the airline continues to slap junk fees on flyers and gouge the public, they're also exploiting their own employees by severely underpaying flight attendants or refusing to pay them at all for safety-critical aspects of our jobs," said Lesosky. "Air Canada has raked billions in profits in the past few years. They can afford to pay us fairly without raising costs for the public." Having taken a strike vote, the union could be in a legal strike as soon as August 16 at 12:01 AM ET.
August 13, 2025 at 2:04 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
I need people to read the packaging and then tell me why they’re calling it sherbert
6 photos of various brands of sherBET that all read sherBET not sherBERT
August 9, 2025 at 3:30 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Earlier today we were talking to the neighbours about how we haven’t seen any deer this summer. They must have overheard us
A small doe and two little spotted fawns on a driveway at twilight
August 8, 2025 at 12:55 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
It’s dangerous to humans and animals, AND they’re doing it for stupid reasons, AND it promotes forest fires. A Ford government trifecta of cruel incompetence.

You think the spraying won’t affect you because it’s far away but it will because we’re all connected. Noticeably, on this smoky weekend.
Photo of text from the linked article: The stated goal? Suppress the regrowth of native shrubs and deciduous trees like birch, maple and aspen-species that support wildlife, resist fire and regenerate naturally. In their place, fast-growing conifers like jack pine are prioritized for timber value. Photo of text from linked article: Our forests are being turned into tinderboxes - sprayed, dried out and filled with flammable conifers.
August 4, 2025 at 12:35 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Books I read in July, including a couple Jane Austen novels I don’t think I’ve read before. I had no idea Northanger Abbey is so funny, loved it.
Titles and authors in alt text.
#litfic #booksky 💙📚💡
A stack of books: Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride The covers of two books: No Credit River by @zoewhittall Outsider: An old man, a mountain, and a search for a hidden past by Brett Popplewell
August 1, 2025 at 3:53 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Today’s book haul from Parry Sound Books and Bearly Used Books
Titles and authors in alt text
#booksky #litfic 💙📚💡
A stack of books: Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg The Billionaire Murders by Kevin Donovan Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clarke
July 28, 2025 at 9:41 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Mean girls meme that says Get in loser we’re going to the World Series
July 26, 2025 at 3:32 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
View of a mirror lake for the morning workout 💪🏻
View looking out across a lawn flanked by trees to the dock, with the lake so calm it’s reflecting the sunrise-lit trees on the opposite shore.
July 10, 2025 at 10:38 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Books I read in June
Titles and authors in alt text

#litfic #booksky 💙 📚💡
A stack of books: Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast Clear by Carys Davies Cloloured Television by Danzy Senna In Defence of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action by Vicky Osterweil Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
June 30, 2025 at 10:33 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Truly remarkable book by a gifted writer and even better human being, @maggiehelwig.bsky.social.
Highly recommend, from @coachhousebooks.bsky.social.

chbooks.com/Books/E/Enca...
Cover of the book Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community By Maggie Helwig Text of a passage that moved me, from one of Maggie’s sermons: We are sent into this world to plant life in the wasteland. Tell the impossible story: That love is stronger than death, and many waters cannot quench it, and floods cannot drown it. That we are not lost among the graves. Tell it in the face of all the evidence. Tell it even if no one believes you, tell it even if you can hardly believe it yourself. Because without this story, the world is lost. Keep saying this, that our hearts and souls can rise out of the rubble, that life will rise up in the abandoned places, that another world is possible, that we can begin to build that world in the wreckage of this our garden. We are the witnesses now, whether or not we feel adequate to the task, whether or not we even want it. We have been made and loved and named. Go into the world, live out the story that the hungry will be fed, and the prisoners will be released, and all the designs of power will fail, and the garden will come back to the city, and the green things rise again. Be, your own selves, the truth of that story in this time and in this place. Walk back into the place of murder, and tell them that they will not prevail. It is foolish, and sometimes dangerous, and it doesn't make sense. Power and greed and fear will try to stop you, time and grief will wear you down. But life stands with you, speaks your name in the morning. Continuation of the passage, all alt text included in the previous image.
June 24, 2025 at 12:27 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Today’s relevant read, In Defense of Looting by @vickyacab.bsky.social
Photo of the book In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil. Subtitle: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action, it features a crowbar on the cover.
June 9, 2025 at 9:13 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
My favourite house in the neighbourhood is for sale and I can’t believe she won’t be mine 😭

www.realtor.ca/real-estate/...
An elegant grey house with window boxes and a porch/portico A big family room with French doors leading out to the patio and pool Backyard with a pool, gazebo, and manicured hedges. It’s a little oasis right downtown
May 31, 2025 at 11:50 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
Books I read in May, titles and authors in alt text

LitFic 💙📚💡
A stack of books: Orbital by Samantha Harvey Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote A Quitter’s Paradise by Elyssa Chang Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters by Bonnie Tsui Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
May 31, 2025 at 10:12 PM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
They’ve done 300 already, and the aim is to pedestrianize five to eight streets per neighbourhood.
JESUS, I SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE FOR OTHER PEOPLE, AND I WANT THAT FOR ME meme
May 25, 2025 at 2:10 AM
charlotteprong.bsky.social
He was actually a teacher at that time but he is also a poet and performer who had a spoken word album titled “Shorty for Mayor.”
Screen shot from Ras Baraka’s Wikipedia entry that reads: Baraka was featured on singer Lauryn Hill's 1998 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, as the narrator of several interludes on the album. He also recorded the intro to The Score, the Fugees' second album. Baraka and Hill recorded an unreleased single together entitled "Hot Beverage in the Winter" which later featured on his spoken-word album Shorty for Mayor.
May 10, 2025 at 4:55 AM