Sansculottism refers to the extreme republican principles, practices, and radical ideology of the sans-culottes, the working-class revolutionaries in the French Revolution. Characterized by advocacy for social equality, direct democracy, and price controls, it embodied a, “without breeches” radicalism aimed at destroying the influence of the monarchy and aristocracy. 

• Symbolism: Rejection of the knee-breeches (culottes) worn by the aristocracy in favour of long trousers (pantalons), representing the common, working-class citizen.
•  Political Action: Favoured direct, sometimes violent, action to achieve political goals, including support for the Reign of Terror to purge enemies of the revolution.

There are always two sides to such episodes. I have never fully understood the appetites of the aristocracy as contradictory; that is, to my thinking, the cooperation of the two would best facilitate the profit of both. Besides they depend on one another. Nor can I explain how accommodation might remotely prejudice the Reign of Terror. The needs of the poor are manifest. The confession of social subordination or “class” is an inescapable reality – requiring more than cake to adjust. Yet, as I say, I cannot for the life of me understand the apparent oversight of the aristocracy to address the issue for mutual benefit.

The sans-culottes is a term describing the working classes of Paris who participated in the great journées of the French Revolution. Identifiable by their clothing, their radical political views and their frequent use of violence and intimidation, the sans-culottes became the face of the radical revolution of the 1790s. There remains, however, considerable debate about who the sans-culottes actually were.

The lesson to me – as a casual observer – is that there is more at stake than meets the eye. The paramount observation must be the voice of the people. But considering the cause and the resulting rupture of the privileged, it is difficult to imagine a nefarious purpose. Hostility flattened the country – seemingly there was no room for reason.

The urgings of the poor are no less evident than the favour of the rich; and both are driven by self-interest, sometimes violently. To escape the furry of the masses is not always possible. But neither the rich nor the poor will resolve their differences without support on both sides; and, most likely that means a mix of attitudes on both sides of the wall.

Perpetual argument is a tarsome undertaking. People are soon exhausted by talk, talk, talk. Meanwhile what remains is the private manipulation of advantage (perhaps under the guise of legislative reform – which can be touted in whatever vernacular has the greatest retail margin). Those having vast real estate or debt portfolios not unnaturally presume dominion for personal advantage. But the obvious dependence on the masses prevents me from appreciating any reserve in cooperation. Could it possibly be that preserving radicalism at any cost is helpful? Perhaps the only question is that related to the most popular vote for re-election. Suddenly the rationality of democracy is reduced to a board game.

Currently throughout the world, it is my understanding that democracy is going downhill. Initially the threats were taken as overrated; but increasingly – in a clear and violent manner – the transition has become disturbing to the point of incomprehensibility. I fear to have been living a fiction. One in these circumstances naturally has no desire to confront and possibly forego  such conflict.

Since roughly 2006, the world has been in a “reverse wave” where more countries are moving toward authoritarianism than democracy.

Already more and more Canadians have altered their customary travel routes. It astonishes me that the change has become a fear of behaviour at the hands of masked and loaded police. It makes for a frightening portrayal of a nation. And it is a portrayal that many consider to have been dormant beneath the surface for decades. It clearly offends intelligence to imagine that one man is responsible for the shift or reform or decay. This too demands support of the broadest nature.

There are so many oddities today that I wondered whether I may have inadvertently consumed some drug which – not unlike the romanticized addiction of Sherlock Holmes – had transferred me to another atmosphere of unqualified pleasure and comfort. Even, for example, a piece I happily listened to on CBC FM radio perfectly finalized the recording precisely as I was obliged to stop at a traffic light when adjoining March Road. Chance? Of course! But nonetheless a notable one, and a pleasing fortuity whatever you may say.

The rest of the day has been riddled with similar happy occurrences, ones that distinguish themselves from commonality. The traffic was oddly light – especially for a Friday the 13th and a Friday before the start of a long holiday weekend. Not to mention Valentine’s Day! Yet the number of cars was few; drivers were abnormally considerate and no one appeared in a hurry. Plus the roads were predominantly dry.

Perhaps the crown of the day was the weather: moderate, sunshine, a definite hint of spring. The unspeakable cold we’ve lately endured was patently more limiting than initially perceived. Freezing temperatures are a rigorous liability.

It bears repeating that I had a good night’s sleep last night. And I won’t embarrass myself by telling you how long I lingered beneath the duvet.  And the breakfast!  Yet another healthful element of my day! We added 2 spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter to the steel cut oats et al.  Insignificant , so you may say, but for me – in my cocoon of ritual habit – the modification was perfection!

Curiously, if these events had similarly unfolded any other day, there is a good chance they may have transpired unnoticed. But to me – today – things were exceptional. Deep within the recesses of my mind I have also nurtured a more favourable recognition of the overall picture. I cannot deny that recently – with Russia at war with the world, Americans murdering their own citizens, threats of separation by the Province of Alberta, and worldwide caution against travel – it makes for a sorry backdrop. Nonetheless my insulation is not an unhappy one because I am so proud of the Town of Mississippi Mills and to have passed half a century here. Nothing beats the consequence! Being able to reap these advantages by effluxion of time is an added bonus.

The first apparent mention of his cocaine use was in The Sign of Four, which is only the second Holmes story. At its first mention, the very beginning of the novel, Watson was already upset at Holmes’s use:

“But consider!” I said, earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.”

Every day is a creation, more often than not an unintentional but nonetheless unquestionable rendition of what we see and feel. The Universe is ultimately personal. Philosophically it is our day. Each of us – as an individual – will create his own eclectic museum of art. If we choose not to portray the fabrication with oil paint, words, music or dance – or through any other model  – we are nevertheless our own artistic vehicle of delivery, the blank canvas on which we portray our singular though unwitting depiction of the day.  And every day is a creation, an inescapable alignment with newness and discovery.  We prepare ourselves in the morning not unlike an actor seated before a mirror in his dressing room. Then apply the costume. And finally execute the performance. Even without design or formation there is conception, spawning thought and reaction into the Universe.

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There’s a narrow thread between wisdom and sharpness in everyday business matters. Yet as priggish as they are, curiously we learn the guiding rules at a young age.  Probably because a prepubescent softball game harbours the identical rivalry and native depravity that unwittingly invades and threatens adulthood. The equally unsatisfactory conclusion is that age is not of itself a limitation or improvement of one’s childish behaviour. Frankly I am inclined instead to presume that the character of a man is made from those early days on the pitch. The transition of time only perfects or modifies the initial allure.

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Lately my already limited sphere of activity has been encumbered waiting. Though I am willing, dear Reader, to relate the dreary detail of what it is that I await, it is irrelevant to the toxicity of the psychosis. The very implication of waiting – that is, a mere postponement – is, one might reasonably conclude, enough to assuage one’s anxiety. And yet it is not. The desire to complete the ambition far outweighs the poetry of idle submission to the weight of minutes, hours, days, weeks or months. Indeed the knowledge of its foreseeability only stimulates the pressure surrounding the deferral.

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Ganymede
1 Greek mythology a Trojan youth who was so beautiful that he was carried off to be Zeus’ cup-bearer.
2 Astronomy one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the seventh-closest satellite to the planet and the largest satellite in the solar system (diameter 5,262 km).

It’s Sunday afternoon mid-winter in Canada under a brilliantly blue and glimmering sunny sky and as vividly cold. Rumour has it that the traditional new year Super Bowl football match is scheduled on television today. We do not have a television.  We abandoned it for our laptop computers instead – though, for my part, I haven’t any ambition or expectation to submit to such a boob-tube production. Competitive sport has never been an amusement of mine. I am as usual riveted to my desk overlooking the white frozen fields and iced upriver view.

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Wind gusts up to 45 km/h are making the temperature feel like -26°C.  Driving along the Appleton Side Road earlier today would have been tolerable had not the wind irreligiously blown scours of blustery snow from the adjacent stubbled field across what might otherwise have been clear, dry pavement but which now were parallel arctic rivers of packed and hardened snow. Nonetheless I refused to abandon my Canadian resolve, a pertinacity to the erstwhile familiarity of childhood and teenage years, building snowmen and tobogganing, skating the Rideau Canal, skiing Mount Temple, bravely succumbing to its restraint, its modification, oppression and opportunities, to winter.

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Almonte, Ontario
February 6, 2026

Dear Reader,

Today – a dismal winter day – I obliged myself as usual to go for a drive in my automobile.  Initially I was hesitant, given the dull weather and the forecast for snow. But I persisted. I was pensive – even remorseful – so I had a lot to consider. I was feeling sorry for myself, off the map.  I summarily pondered past friendships and acquaintances, including those that one might romanticize with love and affection, feelings that I once had for others; but I quickly succeeded to translate the ambience to displeasure. It is, I find, relatively easy to denigrate past relationships that have dissolved.  There is psychiatric recommendation to do so, “Let bygones be bygones!” Nonetheless it is more abrupt than I prefer.  Which perhaps explains why I lingered upon the subject, as though there were some recipe to revive the nutrition. Yet once I convinced myself of the impropriety of the relationship, I fell upon it with a thud.

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Though I don’t now qualify – nor indeed have I ever qualified –  as a regular at a coffee shop, I recall my favourite hangouts. My introduction to roasted coffee beans began when I learned of cappuccino. It was 62 years ago. My family – parents, sister and I – were staying at a hotel on the Italian riviera on the Mediterranean.  As my sister and I passed through the lobby on the first morning en route to the beach we stopped at the bar where we seated ourselves and asked for a coffee.  The bartender (or, now, barista) asked whether we’d like a cappuccino.  I had never had a cappuccino.  In fact at that point – in my 16th year of age – I seldom drank coffee of any description. So we ordered one each. The espresso must have hit me.  I was smitten for life. Now whenever I attend a coffee shop it is always a “double espresso” – which invariably the barista informs me is already doubled so I must in turn ask for a quadruple to overcome any misunderstanding. It has become a predictable and repetitive – and somewhat flat – crosstalk.

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