Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
The other day, I did a walk-up curbside pick-up at the library to collect two books I borrowed for my English 1002 course. Although there was only one copy of each in the library, they were easy to reserve and, I hope and expect they will be easy to renew if required. They are Slaughterhouse …
January is pretty much always the same. Dead Christmas trees get kicked to the curb. The tenth batch of turkey soup arrives with only a fraction of the enthusiasm that greeted the first. And we’ll spend countless hours we’ll never get back sitting on the phone with customer service trying to figure out what’s gone …
Back when such things were considered amusing because nothing more amusing had yet to be invented, my grandfather was fond of reciting limericks as part of the Presbyterian after-dinner frivolity, as we drank tea as viscous as crude oil from the depths of the north Atlantic. Tea fully capable of walking on its hind legs …
This is a suburban status report because the cottage is a wrap for 2020. That means we are now entering the phase of ‘things I’m pretty sure I forgot to bring home.’ These things reveal themselves slowly and it will likely take the entirety of winter for them to make themselves fully known. The upside …
Here’s an Excerpt The very, very, very best Grade 2 art day is asbestos clay day. Asbestos is a wonderful material in the 1960s. Not only does it cover our floors and insulate our walls, it is a mighty fine modelling clay: malleable, full of texture and most of all fire proof. Ideal for making …
It’s been twenty-five years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill. For each and every one of the years between then and now, she has had to suffer the scorn of English 101 students everywhere, because they are experts in recognizing and using irony as a device that can be verbal, dramatic, or situational, but …
Okay. That thing I said a few weeks ago about having had my last lake swim of the season? I was wrong. My definitive final lake swim was the last weekend in September. That weekend, and the entire week preceding it, was gloriously warm and sunny every day. Although I had not dipped my toe …
I’m already beginning to regret going back to school. “But didn’t you just graduate from something? Didn’t you already go back to school?” some of you might ask. And yes, I did, graduating just this spring. Part of the class of 2020 that will be forever remembered for its unique graduation circumstances, until the class …
For some reason, it only just dawned on me that every official season is exactly the same duration of three months. Summer begins on June 21 and ends on September 21, whereupon fall takes over until December 21 and so on through winter and spring, until summer rolls around again. I think it took me a …
At six-thirty on a recent morning, a time when most sane people are still sleeping, especially if they are at a cottage, I was jarred awake by what sounded like the start of a Formula One race. This is what it’s like on bass derby day. I have never been at the marina when the …