Needing some help with a name
It is a rotten time to be a statue—or a professional sports team. At least three teams—the Edmonton Eskimos, the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians—are searching for a new identity and can use all the help they can get. Well, I am out to prove, in the case of the Edmonton team at least, […]
Personal Pan-demic Face
I don’t want this to be another Pandemic Column, but it will be. You’ve been warned. Go for a walk, now, if you’ve had enough of my whining. The thing is, I’m really tired, and still afraid, of this Pandemic. I am as afraid, and as tired, of COVID19 as I am of Justin Trudeau’s […]
Homer
I seldom imagine anything as grand as the silent Aires of the wings of swans in flight: especially in the peace of dawn as they travel low above the willows and bound for the sanctuary of the nearby bay. It’s like the kingfishers skimming tight over the harbour; or silken rain on bare feet; a […]
Home for the Blue Jays?
It’s going to be an interesting next three months or so for sports fans, as the leagues rendered inactive by the coronavirus pandemic all restart their schedules. Major league soccer has already restarted, and will run until August 11. The baseball season —which never got started—begins on July 23 and will run into late October. […]
Bells and banners
Today, Sunday the 19th of July, is my birthday. “Let the bells ring out. Let the banners fly.” As birthdays go, it’s just another day, but with cake and far too many candles. I heard someone say birthdays shouldn’t count this year. I laughingly agreed at the time. I agreed because after four months of […]
Out to lunch
Monday: I harbour inner resistance to sameness: architecture; menu; fashion; housing; urban planning; design; trends—everywhere. In art, while repetition is used as a rhythm, a pattern to complement adjoining rhythms, it is not the thing in its entirety. When it becomes the thing in whole—beige— that’s when the mind dulls, gets underwhelmed as discovery and […]
Bring on the scientists
We are living through a crisis. Thankfully, the mantra that has guided most Canadian politicians through it is to ‘follow the science.’ In stark contrast has been the response of Donald Trump, who has trusted his (rapidly expanding) gut, with disastrous consequences. Indeed, the coronavirus crisis has underscored the importance of a scientific approach to […]
Pandemic toddlers
Week number fifteen, sixteen, ten or eleven? Who really knows? I do remember being at Kingston General Hospital on January 8th, for an appointment, and being asked “all of the COVID/not COVID questions”. “Have you travelled outside of Canada in the last two months? Have you been in contact with anyone who has travelled outside […]
Upping the BRBA
I love to choose books at the library. But it sometimes gets me into trouble, as I end up taking home books that I have only the slimmest intention of reading. For instance, just before our library closed for the pandemic, I came home with a copy of The Senior’s Guide to Garden Gnomes (updated […]
Good old days and birthdays
July! Remember way back in March when we laughed and said hopeful things like, “By the middle of April we’ll be back to business as usual”. I remember those days. In the old days, I remember watching the televised news, in the evening, and thinking how happy I was to live here and not in […]