A morning with Mary
“Hey writer guy! You need a dump lift for that truck!” It’s Saturday morning down at the Hillier landfill site: actually when I say down I mean the section for dropping off garden waste that is quarry-like, which promises that ne’er a hint ’o lake breeze will kiss this kiln-baked crater on a morning like […]
Blame it on the breakfast
One of the icons of the late two thousand and teen years is undoubtedly Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary. Known best for her stone-faced denials of various Trump misstatements and misdeeds, she has recently evoked a little public sympathy following some crude jokes and a restaurant eviction. Ms. Sanders really outdid herself […]
Insert tab A into Slot A
In my “good old days”, sex education consisted of marching the senior high classes down to the auditorium to watch a movie of a child being born. No information was given prior to or during the presentation. There wasn’t a voiceover describing what was happening. There wasn’t a visual to speak of, that is to […]
October 17 looms
I just can’t get excited about the new pot legislation that extends people’s right to voluntarily downgrade their sobriety level. I accept, however, that you can’t legislate against the human condition—we’ve already gone through that with alcohol—so recognizing widespread marijuana use as a fact seems to be sensible. But I won’t be doing any cartwheels […]
Fire up them generators
As I sit here, on my side porch tapping away on my arthritic laptop, I wonder if I might be hard-of-learning when it comes to our dependence upon fossil fuels? In my mind’s eye my computer power cord is snaking its way below ground to a power grid near a crude oil field in the […]
Fighting the cucumber war
There really is nothing funny about a tariff war. Once one side starts it, the other matches, and so it goes until an economic slump results and people start losing their jobs. All the same, you’ve got to find something mildly amusing in the targets selected by our government for a retaliatory 10 per cent […]
It’s all weekend
To borrow, and fine tune, a sentiment of Fozzie Bear’s, “Patriotism swells the heart of the Canadian Bear.” Indeed, if you happened to have spent a few moments in the Village of Wellington on Canada Day, you’d know exactly what I mean. A great wave of red and white washed through the downtown of Wellington […]
Choosing to cheer
Every four years, from mid-June to mid-July, I down tools and immerse myself in the FIFA World Cup of Soccer. It’s just as well the fire alarm hasn’t gone off recently, because I would probably be oblivious to it. The pre-tournament playdowns reduced the field of contenders to 32, excluding along the way such perennials […]
Nice or Kind, or Kinda Nice
I can’t think of a time when I’ve been more confused, offended, offensive, defensive and apprehensive. Well, I can think of one time, but that’s another story. All of the “-ives” and “-eds”. I no longer trust myself to make decisions without second guessing my choices. I’m not talking about making a fuss over the […]
Smarter or dumber?
Is humanity getting smarter or dumber? It’s a question that has bugged Intelligence Quotient researchers for years. And the jury has not yet rendered a definitive verdict. The prevailing view has been that we are getting smarter. A recent ‘study of all the studies,’ that measured four million people in 31 countries found an average […]