Taking a flyer
Oh to be Warren Buffett! You essentially write off your $US8 billion investment in the airline industry— on top of showing a first quarter loss of about $50 billion—and everybody still calls you a genius. Prior to this April, Mr. Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. held an approximately 10 per cent interest in four major […]
Waves
It is Mother’s Day. It’s raining and more than a little bit chilly. The meteorologist mentioned snow, and snow it did. It seems we’re living in the middle of a pandemic whilst looking forward to the invasion of Murder Hornets and, now, we’re enjoying a polar vortex. To me, it seems like a very long […]
Reflection
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” – Steve Jobs May 1 marked three years since former owner, Rick Conroy, handed over the reins of The Times and I stepped into the Publisher/Editor/ Owner […]
Extending the trust
In last week’s column I explored the perceived impact of summer residents on the ability of Manitoulin Island to cope with the coronavirus threat. In the past week, the medical officer of health for Norfolk County has jumped into the fray by banning cottage owners from the Long Point area for the summer, over the […]
Mom, Mom, Mommy!
Could it possibly be the merry month of May? I think, right now, we all really deserve a Merry Month, and May will do just fine. March and April covered the first three hundred days of 2020. May needs to be wonderful and sunny and warm and promising. It needs to be the month when […]
The not so scientific method
PURPOSE/QUESTION: Our isolated, pandemic life is about to become an experiment. Well, let me clarify. A small part of my isolated pandemic life, not LOML’s life, is going to be looked at more closely. I’ll begin by identifying the purpose of this experiment. Recently, I had this bright idea to see if there really is […]
The Manitoulin Letter
I was given a copy of an open letter the other day that was issued by the “physicians, nurse practitioners, traditional healers, midwives and physician-assistants” of Manitoulin Island. The bottom line: they want cottage owners to stay at home this summer. The rationale: a small, rural, elderly population more vulnerable to illness than the average, […]
The New Rock Stars
When people dream of becoming doctors, they traditionally think about becoming cancer researchers, transplant surgeons or paediatricians. Public health hasn’t been near the top of the list. But courtesy of the present pandemic, public health professionals like epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists are our new rock stars. Exhibit “A” for the new profile of public […]
Sometimes a diamond
Our new normal is hard to explain to anyone who asks, “What do you do to keep busy, these days? Do you two have some kind of routine? What about food? Are you eating more or less? What about exercise? How’s that going?” But I suppose everyone’s “new normal” is quirky, and, to say the […]
Humpty Dumpty and the coohuder
It’s week number three enrolled in Shopping Cart 101. I’ve pitched in to help fill gaps in a grocery supply chain that has been slammed with an explosion of demand that is five times normal volume and where food company office workers in the larger chains are being drafted to work on the floor of […]