Category Family
Education Museum I
Sometimes it is the smaller, less advertised museums that can be the most fun. In 2009, when I first visited Ypres, Belgium, I went to the In Flanders Fields Museum (and returned there this year). Included with the admission fee for that museum was admission to a couple of other smaller institutions in Ypres. I […]
Messiah
For some reason a piece of what should rightly be considered Easter music has become an annual Christmas tradition around the world. For many people the season would not seem right without taking in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. I think we have four recordings of G.F. Handel’s most famous oratorio on compact disc. We […]
The Christmas Pageant
It was the three-year-olds on stage that impressed me. Not with their cuteness, though that seemed to be what most adults were focusing on. It was their poise. I didn’t pay much attention to the song, “Away in a Manger,” I think. They weren’t singing; that was the older children’s job (further back on the […]
Mystery of the Missing Pigs
Every family has certain traditions that have developed over the years. Frequently they are small, sometimes silly, things that don’t mean much but are fun to have. In our family one of those rituals involves having your picture taken with the pigs in Lippstadt, Germany, my wife’s ancestral home. The pigs in question are public […]
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
In shopping malls across North American the excitement has almost peaked: Santa Claus is coming! Indeed, many communities celebrate with a Santa Claus parade, held now about three weeks earlier than when I was a child. With no young children in the household I think I will find something else to do that doesn’t involve […]
Let It Snow?
The snow is falling as I write this on Sunday night. I don’t think it is going to stay on the ground this time, but I know it is only a matter of days and winter white will be here to stay; or at least stay until sometime in March. Several times a year, usually […]
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 […]
random thoughts from lorne 
Recent Comments