Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar play is a tragedy in genre. In the second scene of act i, a soothsayer (person who foresees the future) warns the Roman Emperor with these words, “Beware the Ides of March,” repeated once before the soothsayer leaves the stage. We the audience know in hindsight, that the “Ides” refer to the middle of March, the 15th, the date when Caesar will be stabbed to death in an assassination. Here I sit and compose this blog on the 15th of March 2020. Our world is in the midst of an horrific pandemic of the COVID-19 (Corona) virus. On my long run out in the country north of…

Expressions, quotations, pithy and/or humorous sayings, metaphors…lines from novels, songs, and poetry all inspire me and, often, ignite my imagination, admiration and very often leave me in awe. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet; it stuns me that new words and phrases come into our lexicon seemingly without end. In this blog, I want to remind myself, and others, of the power and beauty of words – a kind of aesthetic etymological recollection. Very likely, this will be an ongoing blog, that is, open-ended as I remember more ways of perceiving meanings from cogent phrases and add them to this blog over time. As I compose this…

I started this blog at a controversial time during the 2019 federal election campaign, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s judgement called into question over a black-face incident when he taught in a Vancouver private school. The picture above, or variations of it, appeared in several Canadian newspapers at the time. And this canoe image too has sparked interpretive comments, as though the image says something about his character, his upbringing, his social status etc. What I instantly discerned from Trudeau’s canoe image was a kinship. Justin is sitting in the tumblehome of the canoe, paddling and manoeuvering it with a J-stroke, steering technique. Both his seated position in the canoe…

Games. The allure of playing anything is timeless, universal. Play, in the game or activity sense (as compared to a theatre play), is indefinable – there are no synonyms. We can play cards, monopoly, a piano, sports, lotteries, and so forth; however, one cannot point to something, as you would a fork or a tree, and say, “there, that’s play.” Play, as I see it, is an attitude. In an earlier blog – Jeu…what if… I discussed the more esoteric and perhaps academic-oriented meanings attached to play/games/sport. What I seek to do in this blog is to ruminate about my new-found fascination with a rapidly growing and very popular game/sport…

11 November 2019. I want to re-member (literally, put back together) or bring back into my memory and honour two war veterans, my grandfather, Private Lorance Thomas Morrow (World War I), and my father, Flight Lieutenant Lawrence (Larry) Donald Morrow (World War II). My desire and choice is to relate, narratively and with images for my grandfather, pictorially for my father, what few, scant stories exist about each man regarding his/their service to Canada and, combined with all veterans’ sacrifices, the resultant Canadian freedoms we are privileged to enjoy today. Lorance was born on the 25th of June 1893 in Charlotteville, Ontario. He died 9 April 1917 at 23 years…