It feels weird to have a Christmas season where people aren’t traveling. Welcome to 2020. Pretty much nothing about this year has been normal. I saw this sculpture in Heidelberg’s old town. A friend was leading us through back streets to avoid the crowds, which explains why I had never seen it before. The sculpture […]
It is official. Winter starts today, just as this post is being published. I timed it that way. The forecast high of two doesn’t seem overly wintery. However, there is snow on the way, perhaps ten centimetres on Christmas Eve. That does seem like Winter. Not that the Winter Solstice means much in terms of […]
Today is the last Sunday of Advent, the season of anticipation of the birth of the King. Advent wasn’t a big thing in my Baptist childhood – but I married into a family with a lot of traditions which became mine as well. Those traditions were passed on to our children. Four years ago my […]
Originally posted on Thinking Out Loud:
If you Google the name of a friend of mine, you’ll discover that he died. In 1984. Accept that he didn’t. Google has taken the information about a sports personality I hadn’t heard of, and conflated it with the picture image of my friend who, according to his own…
I’ve been feeling a little tired as 2020 draws to a close. You too perhaps – it has been a stressful year. Turns out I’m not as tired as I feel. I’m actually dead. That is me in the picture. This comes as a great surprise to me. I don’t feel dead. I don’t remember […]
Europe’s Christmas markets aren’t happening in 2020. Too many crowds for safety during the pandemic. So I thought today we would revisit the Christmas market in my wife’s ancestral hometown of Lippstadt, Germany. These pictures and comments are from 2017. I have visited Lippstadt before, but always in the warmer weather. I didn’t know what […]
I understand politicians are feeling a little overwhelmed right now. They’re human after all, and it has been a touch year to be in leadership. So I generally cut them a little slack when it comes to questioning the wisdom of some of their pandemic-related decisions. I figure they mean well, even if their actions […]
Ten days before Christmas – time to lighten up a little.
I was going to write the great Canadian novel. But I never got around to it. Life is like that sometimes. I had a book planned. Then last week I trashed all of my notes. The story revolved around the adventures of a newspaper reporter in a small Canadian town. It would be based on […]
I hadn’t realized how much I missed being in Sulzburg last December until I saw the Christmas decorations going up in the market square. Sulzburg is beautiful at Christmas. European towns make Christmas a big deal. There may not be much faith left on the continent, but the traditions remain. Even in 2020, when so […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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