It’s likely uncharitable, given the cloying year-end imprecations to be “nice”, but I choose to be “naughty”. I draw your attention to my annual dose of Nembutal – the year-end “Happy Holidays” letter from the dentist to her patients. I should qualify that she is not my dentist. I ditched her for a different tooth-borer [...]
” They work with herbs and penicillin. They work with gentleness and the scalpel. They dig out the cancer, close an incision and say a prayer to the poverty of the skin. They are not Gods though they would like to be; they are only human trying to fix up a human. ..” from “Doctors” by [...]
I read Dick Cavett’s occasional blog in the New York Times. He included this maxim/couplet in a September 2011 column, and I liked it: “A man convinced against his will, Is of the same opinion still.”
I am a regular reader of “Studies in Intelligence”, a quarterly journal produced by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence. It contains dozens of declassified academic papers on historical and policy matters, all written through the lens of government intelligence. Earlier this year I read this article by Martin Petersen (former Deputy Executive [...]
I put together a Muskoka chair last week. The kit was manufactured by a company called The Bear Chair, located in South River, Ontario. The resulting chair withstood both my limited carpentry skills as well as this week’s tornado that streaked over my property (I own a trailer, so I guess I can expect a [...]
[NOTE: I wrote this just after Jack Layton's press conference in July 2011. He died on August 22, 2011. Rather than re-write it in the past tense I have decided to leave it as it is.] Jack Layton, Canada’s Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and leader of the social-democratic New Democratic Party, gave a [...]
A quote this week by Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford made the news, but I think it deserves more reflection. Ford was pilloried for his ignorance of Canadian literary icon, Margaret Atwood. Atwood had earlier criticized Ford and his brother, Mayor Rob Ford, for mooting the closure of city libraries as a cost cutting measure. [...]
I’ve discovered recently that my site name is oh so very similar to that of Jonathan Schwarz (www.tinyrevolution.com). We are united by our love of that Orwell quotation as well as the power of the funny (although in this respect, Jonathan is much funnier). I invite you to check out his site. And, since I [...]
…Every point was a point of no return for those who had signed the Covenant in blood. Every fern was a maidenhead fern that gave every eye an eyeful of mud… Paul Muldoon, from his poem “The Old Country” ——————————————————————— In Scotland you encounter the legacies of the Covenanters as often as tartan knickknacks. As [...]
[Note: This post has been edited thanks to comments received from readers. Many thanks for your corrections.] Anyone who has managed the affairs of a deceased relative knows that, even as the dead rise to the afterlife, papers flutter down to the executor’s attention. Some papers vex (unpaid bills, income tax arrears, unwitnessed holographic wills…) [...]
