A communal place
I visited the Three Dog Winery sugar shack about two weeks ago. Bakkus, a rescued golden retriever, kept watch. John fed the fire while Sacha tidied up after the day’s visitors. I wanted to learn about boiling sap, but instead learned of a school fighting to survive. Three Dog Winery got a new maple syrup […]
Becoming a fiction guy
I used to call myself a nonfiction guy. If somebody wrote an inside poltical memoir laying out incompetence and mean-spiritedness behind closed doors, I would be the first to read it. If someone wrote a book about about a world in crisis laying out a five-step plan to fix it, I would be giddy with […]
Grateful
While driving to KTown on Saturday afternoon with LOML, I had lots of time to think about my life. About an hour, actually. Mostly, I was thinking about all of things for which I am grateful. No, wait a minute, people and things. That’s what I meant to say. To begin, I’m grateful I decided […]
What price for your craving?
That’s the question a village full of ice cream enthusiasts will shortly have to ask itself. The Nice Ice Baby premium ice cream outlet in Wellington is threatening to close its doors—unless the owners can raise $200,000 (or more). The Nice Ice Baby people—who now call themselves The Urban Collective, bringing a catering service, a […]
Spring (into elections) time
On a scale of one to ten, I’d give the Provincial Conservatives a two for the circus that unfolded in Markham on the weekend. Seriously? Has the entire world gone mad? The Provincial Conservatives have chosen a bully, who just happens to have a history of drug dealing and violence, to lead their party into […]
Community
Dear Linden, A stranger bought your toast at Enid’s this morning. While you smeared butter on your face—and I spilled soup on my lap—they slipped Karl a fifty. Then they walked out the door, unknown to us. Mom and I moved here two years ago because we needed to be unknown. We ached from the […]
The Blockbuster Trilogies
I never saw any of the Jurassic Park movies, nor did I read the book. I am, however, familiar with the premise. Extinct dinosaurs are brought back to life through the miracle of DNA reconstitution. Terror ensues. The list of “Jurassic” movies is getting long. The original blockbuster movie came out 25 years ago. It […]
The kid
And so it goes. Six months after our Vancouver kids landed in the County, they’ve found a home and moved into their own digs. They own their first home. It’s close to their workplaces and close to our granddaughter’s new school. All of us were looking forward to this event with a mix of excitement […]
Passion times
So here’s a thought. I’ve recently attended a talk series on the subject of passion. The series is the brainchild of our own David Simmonds; the premise to invite individuals within our midst to talk about their purposes, whatever fires their lives. Talks took place Saturday afternoons in the lower part of the Wellington library. […]
Binging season
“Binging”—overdoing it and knowing you are doing so— has deservedly received a bad reputation when it comes to food and drink. However, binging on video—such as spending the weekend in your pajamas watching every episode of M*A*S*H ever produced—seems to be a socially acceptable form of self-indulgence. And with the winter we’ve had, who can […]