This one’s been running through my head for a few weeks. It won’t leave. Steppenwolf’s “Monster” was released in 1969, a call for America to live up to its ideals. Almost fifty years later it is as if the song was written for today. Once the religious, the hunted and wearyChasing the promise of freedom […]

I wrote this post before Canadian Prime Minister Mark carney made his now famous speech last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It seems to me to be a worth addendum to what he said. We think the status quo will last forever. As humans we crave certainty and distrust instability. Yet instability […]

I don’t usually make New Years resolutions. This year I am making an exception. I’m promising myself I will read fewer books Don’t get me wrong. I still love to read. In 2025 I read 102 books. I’d never tracked my reading before. I’m not sure what the list says about me or my reading […]

Super Bowl LX is tonight. I’m having some friends over. The email invitation was titled “It’s the most boring night of the year.” From that you can tell I’m nota big fan of American football. I only follow the NFL enough that I don’t sound completely ignorant if the topic comes up in conversation. I […]

I’m a bit late. I hope 2026 has started well for you. I’ve been taking a break from this space for the last couple of months, more or less. Partly because life has been busy (Christmas, guests, work and friends and family who needed some extra time) and partly because I have been wondering if […]

At midnight tonight the clock will stand still. And the song will begin to play once more. A new year and a new era will begin. At midnight, as November 14, 1975, became November 15, Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” became the first song broadcast on radio station CKCU-FM. It has […]

Just in case you are biblically illiterate (as much of the American church seems to be these days), Jesus wasn’t white, wasn’t a racist, didn’t carry a weapon and didn’t endorse political parties as the drawing on the left depicts. He did feed the hungry, as depicted on the drawing on the right. He had […]

More or less anyway. On Friday the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) announced that they were ending their two-week long nationwide walkout in favor of rotating strikes. I guess they realized most Canadians hadn’t noticed they weren’t getting any mail the past couple of weeks. You would almost think they didn’t want their jobs. […]

It’s funny how you can walk by something hundreds of times and not notice. Or maybe I did notice that the Confederation Building in downtown Ottawa is reflected in the glass of the building across the street, I noticed this on Saturday. Has me wondering what else I have been missing.

The headlines had it wrong. Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t taken off the air for anything he said about Charlie Kirk and his killer. It was his comments about Donald Trump that got him in hot water. When the news story first broke that the late-night talk show host had been taken off the air, I was […]