When I first moved to Beaconsfield I used to hang my laundry on a clothesline in the back yard. After I pinned it to the line, it would billow in the breeze for the afternoon. Because it dried while hanging like that, it barely needed ironing. And it always smelled so good. Like the great outdoors.But my neighbour didn’t like it. I could tell. There was always a comment here and there.So now I use the dryer for everything. It gobbles up electricity as well as the occasional...
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I am posting this from Vernon, BC. Currently I am travelling with the Snowbird Association of Canada. No, it has nothing to do with those pesky Canadian geese. it is an association created to support all those Canadians who go south (mainly to the United States) for some part of the winter.I have noticed how our Snowbird shows are never scheduled in the downtown sections of any of our big cities. They are always outside the cities, in the suburbs, or in small towns. ...
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I’ll bet that Stephen Harper can’t believe his luck. Conservatives are considerably more pro-American than Liberals. And this can be an image problem in Canada. As the usual anti-American knees of the Canadian press all jerk together. But look – here is a U.S. president who is so popular with the press in Canada that no matter how close Harper gets, Canadians will want him to get even closer.This is a Conservative prime minister’s dream. ...
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Last week in my van, I pulled out of my street onto Beaconsfield Blvd. I had made my stop and looked both ways. But a cyclist was flying toward me along the bike lane and obviously had no plans to stop. I let him pass. As I headed into Beaurepaire Village, I pulled along side of him. I rolled down my window and said: “You had a stop sign.”Yes, I am that naïve. He responded angrily with words I will not repeat. ...
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 There have been a number of con men who have found themselves exposed after the recent recession caused their carefully crafted Ponzi schemes to collapse all around them. ...
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As you have probably noticed, we are having the best weather of the summer now. We are experiencing a two-week sunny streak.It has been a strange summer, hasn’t it? In July it only rained twice. Once for 14 days and once again for 15 days.In fact, it rained so often I saw a robin putting sandbags around its nest. He was thinking of changing his name to a robin-rust-breast.The sun never seemed to want to come out. Of course, who could blame it? Would you want to come...
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People are always talking about the big picture. All sorts of predictions of how the planet will be in 50 years. As if anyone knows. But I am more interested in the little things that are changing now. I can see them with my own eyes. Little things no one could have ever predicted. Things that make our time look and feel so different than the past.You can still see the past in old films. What people used to look like on the street. Yes, there was a time when men wore suits and...
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What is it with funerals these days? Recently I heard an ad on the radio for a funeral parlor that went like this: “I want my funeral to be like me, full of life.”And many of my friends have made it known that they too want their funerals to be “full of life”. They want it to be a time for celebration, not mourning. I suppose it is in the grand tradition of the Irish wake. But that is not what I want....
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Canadians don’t understand the raucous debate currently raging in the United States over the Democratic Party’s health care reform bill. We scratch our heads. What are they going on about?We don’t understand, because as Canadians, our society never went through the stage of freedom that American society went through.Karl Marx posited that society must go through various stages before it reached his Utopia. This was the famous “dialectic.” The order was from...
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I admire Yoko Ono. I think she is an astute and clever artist. Her exhibit “Imagine” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts closed a couple of months ago and I am still thinking about it.It celebrated the 1969 John-and-Yoko “Bed-in” at the Queen Elizabeth hotel. Some of you must have seen the exhibit. After all, it was free! If not, I’m sure none of you escaped the hype that surrounded it. Being A Beatle fan from way back, I had to check it out. ...
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