About the third song this past Friday night it hit me. Living in Montreal, at the end of the 1960s and during the early 1970s I had the opportunity to experience an explosion of creative musical culture that may have been unprecedented. Certainly it was for Canada Last Friday Michel Pagliaro came to town. I […]
Clashes between church and state are never pretty. There is a tension between the sacred and the secular, between worldviews that all too often seem diametrically opposed when you would expect them to be complementary. After all, both the state and religious authorities are ostensibly concerned with the well-being of the people. I guess it […]
I had mixed feelings about attending – but I am glad I did. Whirling dervishes are part of an obscure branch of Islam, an ecstatic dance performed only in a few places. I won’t go into details, you can look it up. I am extremely reluctant to contribute financially to something I don’t believe in, […]
I’m not really a garage sale sort of person. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a bargain, but driving from place to place looking for one doesn’t appeal to me. It seems too much like work. I know there are people for whom garage sales are a major hobby. They are up at the […]
It was the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul. That was just a coincidence. Even though I am a skeptic I paid the small admission fee to see the cell where Paul (and supposedly Peter too) was held during his time as a prisoner in Rome. I am a skeptic. If you want me […]
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” That line is a paraphrase of a statement popularized by philosopher George Santayana. It was running through my mind a lot this week, with the news that Ottawa’s Northwestern United Church building is being sold to the mosque next door. I assume the reason […]
The first mosque I ever visited was in a Toronto building that started its life as a Presbyterian church. I don’t think that usage was predestined. It was the Summer of 1989 and the mosque visit was part of an orientation session being given before we moved to Africa. I think the idea was that, […]
I don’t know where this picture came from or what it is doing on my computer. What I do know is that I couldn’t decide what to post today. After cat pictures I think food pictures are the most common thing shared on the internet. But I don’t understand why anyone would care about any […]
I took about 100 pictures of tulips Sunday night, and reaction has been positive to the ones I posted here, so I am going to the well one last time. I’m not a flower person, but you might be. And some of these look more like a Van Gogh painting than a photograph. Enjoy the […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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