Category Family
What Is A Platonic Solid?
There is a television game show called “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” I’ve always felt I was, so I have never bothered to watch it. My niece turned 14 last weekend, so naturally there was a family gathering. When our family get together talk invariably turns to school, and she was asked what […]
Refugees I – The Flight Out
Twenty-five years ago today I became a refugee. Technically I suppose I still am one. We’ve never gone back. In April 1990 we were living in Monrovia, capital of Liberia (West Africa if you need to find it on a map). A civil war had started on Christmas Eve. Government troops seemed mostly ineffective, and […]
Cash Cow or Cash Cat?
My wife tore up the letter from the City of Ottawa, or I would have posted it here. It seems Marshall’s license is due for renewal. If you read this blog regularly you know that Marshall was our cat, who died last month. The city knows we have a cat because the Ottawa Humane Society […]
A Walk In The Woods
Sunday was a beautiful Spring day, so instead of going home right after church we went for a walk. Ottawa is blessed with an abundance of urban forest. I looked it up and though the numbers seemed a little fluid, it seems the city has about 40,000 hectares of forest and parkland. That number seemed […]
Warped in Calgary
I was telling this story recently at a family gathering, and my brother, who had not heard it, said I should do a post about it. It took a long time to tell, complete with hand gestures. Here’s the short version, you’ll have to imagine my gesticulation while you read. In 2006, on a family […]
Vet Bills
This was going to be yesterday’s post, but then Marshall took a turn for the worse. It was written between vet visits, before I knew that his treatment was going to cost a couple of thousand dollars. The sign in the photo I snapped at 2 a.m. Monday says it all: “Financing Available Here.” If […]
Back To The Vet
9:20 a.m. Tuesday March 17. The phone rings. It is our usual veterinary clinic calling. They weren’t open at midnight yesterday, but they had been faxed the details by the emergency service we used. “How is Marshall?” I give an update. They don’t like what I am saying. “You can’t wait until we open at […]
The Vet Visit
“Dad wake up, Marshall is sick.” Marshall is the younger of our two cats, the orange tabby. I looked at the clock. 11:42 p.m. I had had maybe an hour of sleep. Why did this have to happen when Vivian is away? The cats are her problem. I prefer not to be woken unnecessarily, I’m […]
The Epidemic
North America has been seized by a measles hysteria. Should I admit I have never received the measles vaccination? Or would that admission cause panic? In Ontario there have been 15 cases reported (in a population of about 10 million) and that fact leads the radio newscasts. I am a little puzzled about that. I […]
The Parable of the Two Daughters – II
We have all heard that you can’t legislate morality; government should not even try. Many social changes of the past half century, from the legalization of gambling and liberalization of drug laws to changes in how sexuality is regarded, have come from government abandoning its role in areas once thought to be proper for it. […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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