I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about. It was one of those epiphanies that made me reassess my attitude not only towards the poem but towards what
Continue readingAuthor: Ian Chadwick
Scripturient: Modern Credulity Sucks
People believe a lot of crazy things. I’m talking about really seriously bat-shit crazy stuff that somehow people you thought were normal believe and now you look at them like they have grown extra heads. It’s like discovering a whole family of cousins you’ve been inviting for Xmas dinner all
Continue readingScripturient: Goodbye, Cleo
Cleo was an accidental member of the family. Twelve to fifteen years ago – long enough that the exact date is hazy in my mind – she came to us. Well, she was delivered, actually. And yesterday she left us. One late winter day, back then, I was at home,
Continue readingScripturient: Tourism and Collingwood
Tourism is the world’s fifth fastest-growing industry and growing at five percent per year. A recent story on CBC Radio this week suggests growth has been even higher for Canada, thanks to our lower Loonie: at least six percent. According to the Tourism Association of Canada, in 2013, Canada’s tourism industry: Represented more
Continue readingScripturient: Stop Whining, Elvis Haters
Don’t people who hate Collingwood’s Elvis Festival ever get tired of whining and bitching about it? I guess not. There’s another whining letter about it in this week’s Connection. More than twenty years the festival has been running successfully and they still haven’t figured it out yet. Just because you don’t like
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Wrap Up: Addintional Comments
Yes, the web page really does call for “Addintional Comments.” Well, I suppose consultants aren’t hired for their spelling or grammar. Otherwise there wouldn’t be all that bizarre capitalization or the missing punctuation. But you’re here to read my summation of the Collingwood’s fledgling strategic plan, not my editorial critique. Which is
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Part 6: Culture and the Arts
The fifth and final objective in Collingwood’s developing strategic plan (the woo-hoo plan) is culture and the arts. For something so important to the community, with such a huge potential, it encompasses a mere two goals. Disappointingly, neither of them relate to its huge economic potential, which everyone else seems to
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Part 5: Healthy Lifestyle
I suppose we can all agree that a healthy lifestyle is better than an unhealthy one. And to a certain degree, a municipality can help residents choose a healthier one or at least give them opportunities to pursue it. But you have to ask just how seriously committed a municipality
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Part 4: Economic Vitality
What, you may ask, is meant by the term “Economic Vitality” – the third objective in our town’s strategic-plan-in-the-works? Apparently it’s one of those motherhood statements people make on soapboxes and campaign platforms that have little grist in them to mill into actuality. Sure, we all want a town that
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Part 3: The Waterfront
The waterfront. It defines us geographically, historically and culturally. What could be more important to Collingwood than its waterfront that covers the entire northern border of this sleepy, lakeside town? Well, pretty much anything else it seems, if you you’re on Collingwood Council. Pick the most irrelevant, pointless, self-aggrandizing effort
Continue readingScripturient: Strat Plan Part 2: The Shuffle Game
In the second part of my critique of Collingwood’s woo-hoo strategic plan, I will look at the shuffle game. This is where consultants give contestants – I mean participants – a limited series of options and ask them to shuffle these around in order of their perceived priority. Then the
Continue readingScripturient: Reading Tennyson’s Ulysses
Last weekend, while watching the delightful movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I heard Bill Nighy make a wedding speech that included lines from one of my favourite poems: Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I recognized it immediately and it made me open the poem and read it again.
Continue readingScripturient: Strategic Planning, Part One: The Woo-Hoo Factor
There are, in general, two kinds of municipal strategic plans. One is pragmatic and practical. It tells you what you need to build, fix or replace, when you need to do it, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from. This is the stuff a council grounded
Continue readingScripturient: Time of Use Billing
Until I sold my business, a few years ago, and started working from home again, I didn’t realize how much of an aggressive assault on many Ontarians – especially seniors and stay-at-home parents – our hydro time-of-use (TOU) billing is. I had a naïve belief that it was fair. A user-pay
Continue readingScripturient: Going Clear Reviewed
I found it difficult to read Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright (Random House, 2013): it gave me a sense of unease, forcing a frequent over-the-shoulder glance to see if someone was following me just because I was reading it. But nonetheless, it proved compelling – so much
Continue readingScripturient: Fiddling While Rome Burns
You know that legend about Nero fiddling while around him Rome was burning? It’s a popular metaphor for political cluelessness, for inaction, procrastination, for politicians oblivious to the important business of the city while they play games. For municipal leaders who focus on the petty, the trivial, the irrelevant and the self-serving, while major issues
Continue readingScripturient: Another Secretive, Self-Serving Committee
This week, Collingwood Council passed a motion to appoint the Block Five to a new standing committee. The standing committee system, you will recall, is a system of secretive committees that operates predominantly out of the public eye, with limited council attendance, and often without even media presence. Committees conduct town
Continue readingScripturient: Nailing Collingwood’s Door Shut to Business
Councillor Deb Doherty seems eager to cement this council’s already ugly but deserved reputation for being hostile to business. This week she made a motion to re-open the always-contentious sign bylaw, apparently in order to impose draconian restrictions on business signs THAT Council direct Staff to review Sign By-law 2012-110 with
Continue readingScripturient: Reincarnation as a Consultant or a Psychic?
A wag met Nasrudin. In his pocket he had an egg. “Tell me, Mullah, are you any good at guessing games?” “Not bad,” said Nasrudin. “Very well then: tell me what I have in my pocket.” “Give me a clue, then.” “It is shaped like an egg, it is
Continue readingScripturient: Victor Hugo’s Hunchback
I have just finished listening to a well-read audio book (in English) of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, Hunchback of Notre Dame, or more properly, Notre Dame de Paris, as the original title was written. I had read the novel several years ago in a more recent Penguin edition, but hearing it on
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