Category Family
You Turn Me On
(For some reason my phone posted this a few hours early. When you travel, sometimes the technology doesn’t travel as well as you would like.) Tonight at midnight, for the 41st consecutive year, Joni Mitchell’s song “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio” will be broadcast on on Ottawa radio station CKCU-FM . It was […]
They Ate Their Horses
Today we remember. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns fell silent. The bloodiest war in human history to that date was over. But not for everyone. Today, as Canada pauses for the traditional two minutes of silence, I will be remembering my mother’s father. He […]
I Hate Christmas Music
The season is almost upon us, retailers pumping out the Christmas carols (and less spiritual seasonal songs) in an attempt to stir up a buying frenzy and make their bottom line happy for another year. Storekeepers seem to think customers have a Pavlovian reaction to Christmas music – hear it and they spend. The world […]
Reading Hanna’s Diary
In a Germany, where Hitler is the Lord God, we and our children have no place. – Hanna Dahlkotter, 1934. My wife’s maternal grandmother, Hanna Dahklkotter, died in 1967, thirteen years before Vivian and I met. I only know her from stories. When we visited Lippstadt, Germany this summer Vivian’s Aunt Eva mentioned that she […]
Fishing For Eels, Catching Memories
We were walking along the banks of the Thames River in London, England, near Parliament, when we came upon the three fishermen. Or perhaps that should be fisher boys as they were obviously preteens. There was a bench opposite them so we sat down and watched. I never did figure out the family dynamic, though […]
Rest In Peace
In thirty years of marriage I have visited my wife’s ancestral hometown of Lippstadt, Germany, four times. That means I have visited the local cemetery four times. There are family graves there going back to the 18th century, maybe older for all I know. It is a ritual that cannot be missed, though usually it […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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