I am listening to a nocturn in E-flat major by Frédéric Chopin, part of my Favourites stored on the Apple Music site, 245 Songs, 18 hrs. 34 mins. The picks are in some instances the product of maudlin recollection, but most commonly from whatever appeals to me on Apple’s algorithmic selections. I have abandoned the practice of maintaining a library of preferred albums.  Each time I do so (my acquisitiveness is unbreakable) I subsequently discover that my erstwhile favourites have piled atop one another and have been overtaken by random stockpile from the “Listen Now” feature on Apple Music. With so much from which to choose it quickly becomes apparent that saving things is an obstruction; that it is better to shed the burden and to look ahead. Nonetheless for the expediency of readily available music of choice, the Favourites are ideal.  I use it either at my desk or in the car.

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From the moment of rousing the day beneath the shimmering white moon hanging in the dark and clear morning sky, what followed was impossibly delicious! A superbly sumputous day! It was a day when manifestly everyone retired their anxiety and confessed the bounty and beauty of Nature. The scene was the matchless landscape of autumn in its array of colours and windblown varnish. And we saw it to advantage on a sunny day amid cool, dry air; a pastoral setting upon the shaded county roads wobbling between the villages.

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Unless it coincided with the end of a mid-summer month (when routinely there were numerous real estate transactions closing) Friday would normally have marked a pleasant day of the week for practicing law. It was not uncommon for one of my preferred clients to drop into the office unannounced for a glass of sherry and a casual natter. The disposition of the working classes on a Friday was collectively marked by a buoyancy no doubt in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. The uplifted temperament affected everyone, the trades, independent contractors, developers, private and municipal employees and people like me. While I no longer have the weekly need to recuperate from work (or anything else for that matter) nor as a result is the weekend especially distinquishable or remarkable, I nonetheless continue to harbour whatever it was that caused the synapses to diffuse on a Friday.  As trifling as my preoccupations now are, the end of the week is a notch in the post, a conclusion or dénouement. A time of retrospection. Today is no exception.

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We’ve today accomplished another small stride in the alteration of our lives. With the help of two neighbours who own a flatbed truck we removed and returned the dining room furnishings temporarily expropriated by us from my sister’s trove of antique pine collectibles.  There has been an unprecedented commitment to change since our return from Key Largo last April. It began mercilessly with setting up the new apartment (the construction of which had been completed two days later than scheduled last November when we precipitously departed for our winter sojourn). Upon our return home everything was still in boxes. The adjustment is a mission as yet incomplete though we’re almost there. We’re waiting for the delivery of new dining room furniture. Thereafter it should be detail only, no longer the substantive items.

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The study of the unfolding and exploitation of language is never to be shrugged off. More than any other catalyst language is what connects or dissects us. And it is as powerful a channel within as without us.

Philology (from Ancient Greek φιλολογία philología ‘love of word’) is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology.

Historically scribes who were paid to copy documents may have been literate, but many were simply copyists, mimicking the shapes of letters without necessarily understanding what they meant.

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Having lived in small town rural Ontario for about the past 50 years there are discernible marks of my progressive abstraction from the urban landscape. Many of the customs of my earlier days in the City no longer persist. The most evident amendment is the exponentially decreased frequency of retail shopping in the City. This naturally is a small compliment. Unabashedly and in view of my advanced age of three-quarters a century, I have by now surpassed just about every possible limit of relevant commerical consumption. There is little apart from steel cut oats and Honey Crisp apples (both of which can be locally sourced) that any longer propels my appetite or interest. The same goes for grand pianos and complex wrist watches. We haven’t room for a large harp; and Apple Watch does it all. Jewellery and fine apparel are right out!  I have given up looking like a Jewish widow; and a Bonnie Prince Charlie waistcoat isn’t handsomely tailored for one of my girth. As lately as yesterday we agreed black and white are the simplest and best costumes; all else borders upon vulgarity. Though I might preserve the value of a silk scarf just to avoid complete frugality.

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It was plain sailing on a day such as today, beneath an exquisitely cloudless sky illuminated like a blue sapphire in seemingly endless brilliance round about the unbroken horizon, when the river sparkled in the lemony sunshine and the trees yet retained their copper foliage. Dressed in my grey cotton track pants, a silk scarf about my neck and a jacket atop my sweater, I breezed along the riparian roadway earlier this morning on my three-dimensional tricycle, alternating from one end of the now familiar route to the other then back again until having exhausted the precious moments of the ante meridian.

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While lunching at the golf club today on the last day of the season with dear friends from nearby Smiths Falls there were invoked during our leisurely conversation at table two themes of consequence which at the time I had not conflated but which now upon reflection I do. One involved sexuality in general; the other, women in particular.  The threads were not especially flattering.

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Corantos were early informational broadsheets, precursors to newspapers. Beginning around the 14th century, a system developed where letters of news and philosophical discussion would be sent to a central collecting point to be bundled and sent around to the various correspondents. The banking house of Fugger had an organized system of collecting and routing these letters, which often could be seen by outsiders. This system would not die until the 18th century. The term “newspaper” was not coined till 1670. Prior to this, a welter of terms were used to describe this genre, including “paper”, “newsbook”, “pamphlet”, “broadsheet”, and “coranto”.

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When things go wrong we seldom nowadays contemplate the effect of anything mystical. We may however apologetically impose a species of predictable misfortune if we are inclined to believe the application of luck and chance to anything we do.  Seldom however do we go beyond the attribution of religious punishment or divine retribution.

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