Today, as I turn 71 years of age, I choose to look in my life’s rear-view mirror. In particular, I have been thinking about my boyhood in the black and white 1950s.Television shows were in black and white; photographs were black and white – perhaps dreams were too. The 50s were and remain for me enigmatic, mysterious, and compelling all at the same time. Immediately, I think of Edwin Brock’s marvellous poem, Five Ways to Kill a Man… There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.You can make him carry a plank of woodto the top of a hill and nail him to it.To do this properly you require…

On March 15th, I wrote a blog entitled, The Ides of Corona March. It was coincident with the beginning of Ontario’s Corona virus-induced shutdown with social-physical distancing regulations, the closing of most businesses (except those deemed “essential services”), and the start of what we term the “new normal” of living with the COVID-19 reality and threat. Currently, decisions are being made all over the world about re-opening; how to re-open – in stages, all at once; what to expect, how best to protect oneself as well as others. Questions loom about very realistic concerns such as, is it too soon? Have we flattened the curve enough? Will there be a…

Alexander – Sandy – Joseph Young, Jr 16 April 1938 – 6 August 2000 Restigouche River ~ runs from the Appalachian Mountains, northwestern New Brunswick to Chaleur Bay, Quebec Sandy Young was and remains my dear friend. Ripped from this world by GI cancer, had he lived he would be 82 the middle of this month, 16 April 2020. I miss him greatly and think of him very often; he taught me so much, and more than any other person I have ever met, in his company, I and we laughed so brazenly, so deeply every single time we met. We shared an indescribable bond with perspectives about life that…

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…