#MeToo
Did I mention #MeToo last week? I did. I am, like many of you, impressed by the number of people who have posted #MeToo on their social media pages. In a some manner, we are finding strength in those numbers. I imagine most people I know—mostly women—have been sexually assaulted and/or harassed, at least once, […]
In honour of the scarecrow
I am working on creating a twinning of hamlets: Slab Creek will likely be matched with the village of Nagoro, which is on the Island of Shikoku, Japan. It will be a good move on the level of global movement. You see, my attraction to the idea is that Nagaro has a population of 35, […]
The Slovenian bagpipe incident
October has not been particularly kind to the Scottish national soccer team. They were turfed out of the World Cub 2018 competition after failing to win a crucial game against Slovenia. If that wasn’t bad enough, archrival England were in the same qualifying group, won the group outright and therefore advanced. But there is more […]
Compassion under fire
I’m going to start this column with #MeToo. Amongst all of the other crap and corruption we all have to live with these days, now we have the threat of the supervolcano in Yellowstone Park? Seriously, as much as I am all about keeping up with current events, I feel as if this story is […]
Thanks and give me another slice of pie
My baby sister (in-law) kindly cooked the family Thanksgiving dinner. She’s a brave person, in my books. She didn’t show any fear for the loud, opinionated, creative crowd of brothers and others. I like that in a person. She and my brother had their plan of attack for the event and executed it deliciously. Once […]
Lament for the handmade sieve
Ever wondered why you just can’t find a good sievemaker these days? Or a really top notch cloggist? Well, you are not alone in your wondering. The British Heritage Crafts Association has just published a study that finds some 62 traditional handcrafting skills are in danger of being lost; and that four—cricket ball sewing, gold […]
Conversations
Writing a column is a scary proposition, especially to a private person. To put forth to the public one’s perspective every week is a daunting task, as much for the writing as for the response. But for more than two years I did it, trusting, and rightly so, that my words wouldn’t make me a […]
You’re welcome
Fourteen years! The County Marathon has been a fall event in the County for 14 years. The local newspapers, the radio and even the local television station have made mention of the County Marathon, the date, the road closures, the times and the potential for inconvenience. As with years in the past, I would like […]
Sandcastles
Human beings are flawed. And ambitiously, we’ve built a society around our humanness with such complexity that not one of us could ever hope to understand it all. We require a web of people with expertise in science, technology, administration, even our own minds, just to make navigating our world manageable. And we have to […]
Age and treachery
As much as I don’t like to think about it, I’m not getting any younger—but being old has an upside. Yeah, it does. I’m not saying I’ll use my elderliness as an excuse to get out of doing something, but sometimes it’s definitely to my advantage to be as old as I am. For instance, […]