In comparison to the current endeavour of international leaders to duck-shove global bankruptcy and to defeat the spread of the Coronavirus, the heady ambitions of youth to grow hair, workout and fix their acne appear demonstrably irresponsible. What however disturbs me even more is that both eventualities – disease and youth – have a decidedly human characteristic, a certain inevitability. Both are reflective of different times and events but both are nonetheless inalterable and perhaps even predictable features of humanity. In that respect to question the enthralment of either is tantamount to debating the strength or motive of appetite. If age has afforded me anything it is recognition of the paramountcy of the gut.

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Though my day today was latterly disrupted by the necessity to buy a fitted bed sheet – a domestic adventure I can assure you is not to be diminished – I am seemingly nicely recovered. My disposition is as well realigned. I am poised to fashion a transparent and hopefully pleasing rendition of all that has transpired. Call me sentimental but it is my belief that these halcyon moments provide a stimulating and entirely digestible account for persons of any stripe.

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Everyone has turned their eyes to the upcoming USA presidential election. The interest far surpasses normal political curiosity especially internationally. What’s really going on is a lip-biting and knowing look and the possible descent of the modern day Roman Empire. The American dream is by popular admission suffering the foreseeable display of imaginary design, economic disruption, intolerance and inequality. It is sadly useless to lay the entire blame for the current state of American affairs at the doorstep of the entertainment artist and current president Donald J Trump. Trump is just a sequel to emerging events, the second act of a once comic demonstration.  Trump is clearly out of his depth and America is paying the price. The American “deplorables“ have unwittingly backed themselves into a corner from which they are for almost every strategic or political reason unwilling to resile although in my opinion their unprecedented defeat is imminent on November 3 next.

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Soaring in my Aviator today along the featureless  and undulating ribbon of highway from Fitzroy Township through Lanark County to the Village of Burnstown was a relentless breeziness. It was a serene Friday afternoon at the end of August. The sky was blue, the air was clear. I had in the words of the late Hughie Whitten “a full tank of gas and a clean windshield“. At last I succeeded to embrace our geographic limitations! Instead of casting my searching eyes and wandering fancy to borders and boundaries beyond I have contented myself to withdraw from that purpose. I shall with equal diligence investigate what is at hand.  The words convenience, economy and natural homespun beauty spring to mind as inertia!

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Every day now is pretty much the same.  Which is not to say it is a bad thing, just inordinately repetitive. No doubt I suffered a version of the same dilemma when I was younger and tied to a school desk or an office chair. The conviction then was mandatory.  Yet what’s conspicuously missing from the current environment is the privilege of expectation.  We haven’t a clue where this is going.  Meanwhile we’re going nowhere either.  My redemption if any is that I have allowed the restrictiveness to insinuate my being. It is now an accommodated state. A play on “adjustment“, I believe.

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I lived in Washington, DC with my sister and parents in about 1958. We resided on Edmunds St NW coincidentally around the corner from then Vice-President Richard Milhous Nixon. I was in the same class as his daughter Patricia Nixon at Horace Mann Elementary School. Ever since I can remember there have been racial problems in the United States of America.  I have always found it to be a weird peculiarity of an entire nation especially one which openly and relentlessly prides itself on equality, freedom and opportunity. As might be expected my exposure and understanding of the dilemma was insulated and far removed from the source. 

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There was a cool wash in the clear air this morning. It unmistakably hinted at approaching autumn weather – an anticipation of frost on the patio wooden railings, an azure dome above and a provocative stir among the leaves. Attired in my synthetic black jersey, T-shirt and shorts with the zippered side-pockets I sailed along the shaded promenade cheerfully thanking the young bearded landscape workers for their remarkable transformation of the pathway. Again and again I am reminded of the fortuity of being confined by the pandemic to the County of Lanark.  Perhaps our international quarantine will be abandoned by next spring. For the time being there is no digestible proposal for change.

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With the customary precipitateness we’re swinging headlong into the fourth quarter of August, the late summer balmy days of emerald corn fields, waxed yellow beans, polished green zucchini and small ivory potatoes. All this beneath a vast ceiling of crystal blue, billowing white clouds and high air pressure. Spirited by an early morning cycle adjacent the Mississippi River on the erstwhile railway right-of-way and a subsequent unwitting siting of Hudson’s vegetable stand alongside the road we’ve arranged to have tonight a traditional meal of meat-and-potatoes – punctuated with butter, ground pepper and Maldon sea salt flakes.

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There isn’t anyone I imagine who hasn’t at one time or another yearned to be somewhere else; yearning to do something else with someone else. But as the saying goes, “You is what you is!” and there ain’t no turning back or changing the face of the clock. Though the frequency may not be as great as that particular longing, today marked one of those serendipitous moments when everything goes in the right direction, making one happy to commit willingly to whatever is at hand. Indeed the combined fortuity today of the weather, shopping and driving experience prompted me to rejoice in its currency. As with so many similar calculations many of the incidents were trifling by any account, things like the chance discovery of a cheap but highly workable product for what had been a simmering though negligible idea over the past several years.

The song’s title (“La vie en rose”) can be translated as “Life in happy hues”, “Life seen through happy lenses”, or “Life in rosy hues”; its literal meaning is “Life in Pink.” La Vie en rose (May 1945) is a song by Édith Piaf, with music by Louiguy, Édith Piaf being the lyricist, but not the composer, registered with SACEM.

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It was about 1978 – shortly after I bought my first house – that I entertained my long-standing friend Jo Ann Trudeau from Toronto.  She and I had attended undergraduate university at Glendon Hall together. We shared many singular occasions. Among them was watching the televised landing of the first man on the moon from her parents’ two-storey penthouse on St. Clair Avenue East. There were other less dramatic incidents like my introduction to the Bodum French coffee press – also on the balcony of her parents’ place one sunny Saturday spring morning. I recall too some fairly vivid memories surrounding chocolate milk shakes which my discretion prohibits me to repeat. But what lingers most prominently is Jo Ann’s gift of a single red rose.  She gave it me as a “house warming” gift.  It was boxed in a large flower cardboard carton complete with white tissue paper and green ferns.

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