Parking in Collingwood – especially downtown – has been a contentious issue since at least the mid-1980s. Numerous studies have been done advocating a variety of answers, none of them entirely satisfactory to everyone. The factions of free versus paid parking have been warring as long as I can recall.
Continue readingAuthor: Ian Chadwick
Scripturient: Blog & Commentary: May’s Breads and Pasta: 1
So far this month, I’ve made two loaves and one batch of pasta. But the month is barely started, so I have lots of time to make more. The breads so far were nothing spectacular – acceptable, reasonably tasty, but hardly exciting. I’ve made better. The pasta on the other hand,
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Four Books
For many centuries, the core of Chinese education was focused on four classical works from the Confucian school: The Analects, The Great Learning, The Mencius, and Maintaining Perfect Balance. This didn’t really change until the arrival of the West and the industrial era was forced onto China in the 19th century.
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Reward or Punishment?
Which works best in compelling behaviour of your subordinates: the carrot or the stick? Science has come up with the answer in a new study about how to get results from people. Here’s a little piece I posted about the research on the Municipal Machiavelli today, in part based on
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Worm Turns
This morning when I was doing my regular news search online, I came across two stories that stopped me cold: we’re being invaded. By worms. Yep. Worms. Not the slimy invertebrates who write scurrilous, defamatory self-aggrandizing blogs and whine about free speech when they are taken to court over their
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Ontario’s Sex Education
As Frank Zappa sang in his 1968 song, What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?: What’s the ugliest Part of your body? What’s the ugliest Part of your body? Some say your nose Some say your toes I think it’s your mind, your mind, I think it’s YOUR MIND, woo
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Count of Monte Cristo
Many of us grew up on the stories of Alexandre Dumas; from cartoons to comic books, TV series and movies. And, yes, books, albeit often abridged for the young market, with drawings of swordsmen, women in flowing dresses, and the court of kings. Swashbuckling adventures, romances with honour and swordfighting.
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Someone’s Paying Attention
I was glad to see the Connection is attending and reporting on some of the council standing committee meetings. The media need to be there to shine a light on what seems to the rest of the town as a secretive, unaccountable process. At least the Connection is paying attention. The
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Turning Positives into Negatives
Once upon a time, when George Cerny was the publisher, the Enterprise-Bulletin newspaper was an avid and active local promoter: the indefatigable cheerleader for the town; for its events, activities, clubs and organizations. It was the proud voice of Collingwood. No so, today. The paper seems to have lost that community passion. Today it
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Grey Wolf Escapes
Forget your chemtrails, your big pharma, your New World Order; forget UFO abductions, Bigfoot and GMOs. This is the granddaddy conspiracy theory of them all. This one makes all the rest look like grade school gossip. It makes the petty conspiracies of local bloggers look like the diaphanous piffle they really are.*
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Making Pasta
Last year I decided to start making my own pasta. Seems a natural extension of my bread making. But it took several months before I could get started, what with personal issues and, of course, the holiday season interfering. This week I finally took the step. As usual with me,
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Prenzie Scamels
Four hundred years after he wrote them, we still use in everyday speech the many words and phrases Shakespeare coined. He gave us so many, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to list them all here. But two words he wrote have stopped us dead: prenzie and scamels. What do
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Bad Designs
I’m not a graphic designer. I was not formally educated in that art. However, over the years, my jobs in editing and writing for books, newspapers, magazines and publishers have required me to learn the rudiments of layout, typography and design. I am the first to admit my design talent
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Not Getting It
In a recent opinion piece in the Enterprise Bulletin titled “Swayze overused by council?” EB reporter/editor Paul Brian comments, I think the overuse of Swayze is outlandish and it is not congruent with the tough financial situation of the town.* Like much of the EB’s increasingly vague reporting since former editor Ian
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Written by God?
I don’t pay as much attention to American politics as I suppose I should, in part because despite the entertaining craziness of some of their politicians, the internal politics seldom affect Canadians, and also in part because the craziness not only baffles me – it scares me. But this week
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Me, Myself and I Redux
At Collingwood Council meetings, you will always hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table.* Argh! Where did these people go to school? Clearly our education system has failed us if people were raised to say that. And this is in the public record, too. To
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Shakespeare Changed Everything
I have been reading an entertaining little book called How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which, as the title suggests, is about the pervasive influence the Bard has had on pretty much everything in our lives ever since he started putting quill to paper. Stephen Marche’s book was described in the NatPost
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Too Many Books?
Tim Parks* wrote an intriguing essay in the New York Review of Books last week with that title. My first thought on seeing it was to wonder if one can ever have too many books. But of course, Parks – an author himself – is looking at the bigger picture,
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Rethinking John Carter
After recently going through the first five of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 11 Barsoom books, I decided to give the 2012 Disney film, John Carter, another viewing. This two-hour-eleven-minute film bombed at the box office, and when I first saw it, I was deeply disappointed. But on reflection after a second
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: We Need a Different Integrity Commissioner
Monday night’s council meeting again underscored why the town needs someone new in the role of integrity commissioner. Lawyer Robert Swayze presented his report about a complaint filed against councillor Deb Doherty and it was accepted by council in a recorded 6-2 vote*. But his report shared the same flaws his
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