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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October 21, 2023
Riverfront Estates
Almonte, Ontario

My dearest Lynn,

Thank-you for your email in which you asked for my thoughts regarding John’s request that you plan a reception following his death. May I first acknowledge that Johnnie often repeated the names of Lynn and Hugh as those who were among his closest and most valued friends. I recall your friendship goes back many, many years (perhaps as far back as childhood in Manor Park). Whenever we all foregathered it was instantly apparent that you, Hugh and John mutually propelled one another. Your collusions and bantering were unparalelled and as often mischievous.

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Why we are possessed by the contention that there are two ways to look at things (as opposed to three or more ways of doing so) I can only resolve by the comprehension that the proverb is designed to address a conflict or contrast between one side and another.  This attributes to the adage a collective feature. In any event what I am getting at is that there are always ups and downs in life, some good and some bad, ins and outs, ons and offs, bigger and smaller, richer and poorer and so on.

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Getting things settled seems to be an interminable preoccupation.  I suspect the enterprise is characteristic not only of my own mundane lifestyle but common to us all.  Each day something new arises, something to disturb the former placidity, something to corrupt or enlarge whatever we had before determined as sufficient and workable.

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