Desert wines
You can see on a globe that the wine regions of Bordeaux, Sonoma County and Napa Valley share latitudes with the Gobi wine region of China. However, the comparison ends there, since this new wine region requires the ultimate in TLC. Vineyards in the Gobi of Inner Mongolia are subject to extremes similar to our […]
The conclusion of the Games
As an avid fan of international sports contests and games, I was intrigued when an announcer mentioned that there were tickets remaining for the closing ceremonies of the Pan American Games in Toronto. I had not seen any of the events, but caught some of the action on TV. I watched the conclusion of the […]
Musings on Albert
There are days when I wish to be a seagull. I mean, more likely perhaps that there could be moments when we could trade shoes, or webbed feet—the seagull and I that is— something like a kid’s transformer character who could move from person to feathered being and back again. The back-again part would have […]
10 excuses for 37 million people
Websites get hacked all the time, data gets stolen and people get indignant. But what if the hacked site has 37 million users, and every one of them is registered for the purpose of conducting some business he or she wishes to keep secret from someone else? That is the dilemma now facing Avid Life […]
Superwalk
Everyone has a cause. For LOML and I, it has been heart disease and stroke. For several years, LOML and I, along with a couple of our children, cycled in the Ride for Heart fundraising event in Toronto. With the help of our friends and family, we raised thousands of dollars for heart and stroke […]
Schoolyard politics
When I was still very young, I learned many of the unhelpful platitudes that go along with being bullied. “Just ignore them and they’ll stop,” “Children are cruel,” and “They’re just jealous” were common. But in all the mess of ineffective advice that seems bizarre to deliver to an emotionally vulnerable eight-year-old, no adult in […]
Creative solution
Tomorrow night, residents and friends of the village of Wellington will gather at its town hall, one of the many historically significant buildings on its main street, to discuss the preservation of a building on its main intersection. They will reflect on the history of downtown Wellington and think about its future. But they will […]
Busy times
Ah, the crazy days of summer. Action has heated up all around the world, on the sports scene. Toronto is hosting the Pan American games for athletes on the left side of the Atlantic Ocean, according to my globe. They will be wrapping the games up soon, always amid some controversy. Apparently the lead act […]
A sweet niche
Vin Santo has a fabled history as a sweet dessert wine from the island of Santorini that was exported by the Ottoman Turks to Russia, for the express use of celebrating Russian Orthodox mass. Some say the Venetians imported this wine for distribution throughout the Italian peninsula, and called it Vin Santo to identify the […]
The fourth brouhaha
There are three brouhahas currently underway concerning the future of the Wellington convenience store at the corner of Wharf Street and Main. (That has a nice ring to it: perhaps they should turn it into a blues song based on the one about standing on a corner in Kansas City.) Of course, there is nothing […]