Regimentation, I have perhaps belatedly learned from personal experience, has its appeal. My boarding school upbringing was part of a strict system or pattern – basically a combination of academic and social routine, detailed daily physical exercise, military battalions and the Church of England. These Stoic expressions were naturally designed to manipulate the membership physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Though there were occasional academic pursuits which afforded conspicuous mental stimulation and development, most were primarily ceremonial, formula and memorization. Apart from that operative condemnation however the general spirit of the endeavours was worthy, the most wholesome of which was nothing more grand than the seven o’clock alarm which awoke the Upper and Lower School every morning.

Continue reading →

This morning at 8:30 am sharp – on what has proven to be a glittering summer day – we rallied for a restorative breakfast with old friends in the Village of Appleton at the Mississippi Golf Club on the patio overlooking the first tee. Between mouthfuls of crispy bacon and sips of black coffee I shared with the two young gentlemen, Grayson and Crosby (aged 12 and 10 respectively) that we have the singular distinction of having known their father Paul and Uncle Steve when they were about the same age; and naturally their grandparents Dave and Barb (who were then our next door neighbours); and, their mother T (whom we met when their parents were first dating before they married). The alignments cover almost half a century. In this sometimes frantic world, long-term acquaintances are infrequent – at least ones which survive by design. It is even rarer that alliances grow organically about an initial orbit.

Continue reading →

There’s only so much one can eat.  While sailing through the countryside today for a Sunday afternoon drive I revered the sight of the yellow-crowned emerald corn stalks reaching to the blue sky, row on row, up and down the expansive fields. But the thought of having to struggle with bits between my teeth after gnawing on a fresh cob of boiled corn rapidly diluted the romanticism of the project. There are so many less preposterous ways to dine! Anyway the more pressing obstruction is that for two people living alone there just isn’t the threshold for nature’s summertime bounty.  At roadside stands the crops are persuasively sold in bulk from the piles of freshly gathered vegetables. The measure of my daily consumption is plotted in halves of tomatoes, half a green pepper and half an English cucumber. Besides if I had much more I’d have no place to store them properly. The best I can do to subscribe to summer’s bounty is to look at the grocer’s for the Ontario label and grab what’s available.

Continue reading →

Alliances – as much as we occasionally feel the necessity to preserve certain of them – are seldom fruitfully controlled by ambition. This seemingly self-evident truth is however often confuted by a personal miscalculation; that is, we are more than likely deceived by ourselves than others in what at first appears to be a public demonstration. What drives the internal mechanism is not judged by what we or others fashion as either normal or predictable. We are driven by the inexplicable and frequently magical ardour of our very complicated nature. It’s what unites Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff – not what they know but what they feel.

Continue reading →

Without a word of a lie, when I bicycled out of the garage this morning into the open air, the first thing I heard was the shrill whine of a cicada. It was then I knew that August was upon us. Say what you will about June and July, when it comes to the identity of summer it is for me the month of August and the sound of the cicada. The mounting emerald corn fields on either side of the Appleton Side Road yesterday created the illusion of a shady canyon to the Village. The flowers about the condominium are at their peak. The honey bees are like drunken waifs.

Continue reading →

Shortly after I got out of bed at seven o’clock this morning – and before the atonement of physical activity – breakfast was by contrast a gooey sweet butter tart from Beckwith Bakery and a squirt of THC/CBD from the Lieutenant Governor in right-of-the Province of Ontario.  Terribly reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and laudanum. Devoting oneself so critically to one’s addictions. It was not only a brilliant start to the day but also a stimulating way to embark upon my morning bicycle ride.

Continue reading →

Whenever there has been (such as now prevails) national tumult surrounding something as marketable as public health, it is to be expected that opinions will foment. The metropolitan appetite for both specificity and vengeance contemporaneously floods the stage. Nor is the scope of the aggression limited; everything and everyone is exposed to censure and punishment. It is the perfect battleground for lawyers because it involves that most fundamental notion of modern freedom; namely, the habeas corpus. And maybe even more deeply it evokes a constitutional right as ancient as the Magna Carta itself. Addressing a modern challenge through the eyes of something so fundamental promises to afford some very basic repercussions. In times of distress the room for obfuscation is narrow. I believe we have to set ourselves to endure some blunt conclusions.

Continue reading →

When we (that is, the government) wanted to stop people drinking alcohol, neither destruction of the product nor Biblical verse persuaded any of them to do so. It was a scene which decades later was unconvincingly repeated with nefarious combustibles.  Now both alcohol and marijuana are legal.  The government that once denounced the products now sells them. Government is like parenting (“Do as I say not as I do“); that is, well intentioned but always a titch out of the loop.

Continue reading →

In an atmosphere of perpetual retirement it seems hardly befitting to squawk about taking a break.  From anything.  I mean to say, I’m already broken! The chain that once linked me to productive employment long ago disintegrated. Apart from what appears to be a revolving list of dental and medical appointments, there is otherwise little if anything on the horizon which remotely touches the character of work. Yet today it was time for a break.

Continue reading →

Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.

Continue reading →