Like food fads, political fads wax and wane as the gnat-like attention span of their followers gets diverted by the Next Big Thing. Political Correctness has of late given birth to Cultural Appropriation just like the gluten-free food fad gave rise to lectin-free food fad. All such fads are fuelled
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PostArctica: The Giants in Montreal
Went downtown today to check out the giant marionettes that are dominating the scene in the city this weekend. It is pretty cool because the crew that accompanies each giant are energized and organized much like a Cirque du Soleil act. The down side of this is that it really
Continue readingPostArctica: Printemps
I may have said this before but it bears repeating… I once had a problem photographing something in terms of composition, or maybe it was just attitude, in any case, I advised myself to just go in like Friedlander shooting cacti. And it has very much become a part of
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Power of Moms – Disney Princesses
Always trust Mum’s to fix things up in a jiff. Filed under: Arts Tagged: Disney Princess, Fairy Tales, The Power of Mum
Continue readingScripturient: Auden, Trump and poetry
There’s a poem by W. H. Auden (1907-73) going the internet rounds these days with suggestions of Auden’s prescience towards the latest American president and contemporary politics. It’s a powerful piece, but the bad news for conspiracy theorists is that Auden was a poet, not a prophet. A good poet,
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – Christian Pop Culture Beyond Salavation
There was a time when religion commissioned great and wondrous art. Awe-inspiring cathedrals were built by the most grand and innovative architects. Beautiful music for masses were composed by the greatest musical minds in history. Religious paintings were created with skills and passion that have yet to be matched, even
Continue readingScripturient: Leonard Cohen deserves the Nobel Prize, too
News that songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature shook the literati worldwide. Here was a pop icon sitting in the august company of Alice Munro, Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Yasunari Kawabata, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw,
Continue readingScripturient: Why Fonts Matter
The first problem I have when receiving a new book on typography is that I spend far too much time looking up the typefaces described or sampled therein, and searching for them online, instead of reading. Then I start looking at (and critiquing) the ty…
Continue readingScripturient: Boris Godunov
I’m not sure why Boris Godunov, moves me like it does, but it has a curious, emotional effect on me. It’s a sprawling tragedy mixed with politics and betrayal, weighted down by brooding and scheming characters, a fickle mob, a holy fool, a …
Continue readingScripturient: Loteria de Camacho
Ever since I first visited Mexico, more than 30 years ago, I’ve been fascinated by its culture. It’s beautiful, exotic, alien, yet also comfortable and attractive. One of the things that have intrigued me since the start is the lottery game…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The DWR Friday Musical Interlude: an Odd Intersection
When it comes to musical taste, I guess you could say Arb and I are a little… odd? We’ve shared our love of classical and choral music quite a bit, but then we also like the hard stuff. Here is a whole group of young people who seem to feel the same way: Viva Vox […]
The Canadian Progressive: Michael Geist: The Trouble with the TPP’s Copyright Term Extension
The TPP’s copyright term extension discourages creativity, restricts access, and imposes enormous costs on Canadian consumers and educational institutions, argues Internet law expert, Michael Geist. Meanwhile, the term extension is “a major windfall fo…
Continue readingScripturient: Judas, a Biography
Long before Darth Vader, long before Lord Voldemort, long before Stephen Harper, Judas Iscariot reigned as the supreme icon of evil in Western mythology. Judas betrayed God. How much worse can you get?* For 2,000 years we’ve used the term Judas
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Christmas Friday Musical Interlude – Silent Night (again)
Arb may not be such a fan of Silent Night, but it will always be special to me. In my church while I was growing up, we would end our Christmas Eve service by all getting out of the pews to stand in a huge circle around the sanctuary. We’d pass out candles, then turn out […]
Dead Wild Roses: And now for something completely different…
Us folks at DWR seem to be all full of Holiday sweetness and light and goodwill, this year. Just to reassure y’all that we haven’t gone totally soft, I’d like to share this video with you. It helped me earlier in the season, when I wasn’t ready for celebrating yet, and I needed an antidote […]
Dead Wild Roses: Rebecca Solnit – Men Explain Lolita to Me
Just a great article through and through. Go read it all here. “I sort of kicked the hornets’ nest the other day, by expressing feminist opinions about books. It all came down to Lolita. “Some of my favorite novels are disparaged in a fairly shallow way. To read Lolita and ‘identify’ with one of the […]
Dead Wild Roses: Friday Classical(ish) Interlude: Beethoven’s 5th… for electric guitar
A love of Beethoven was one of the things Arb and I bonded over, early in our relationship. Going on a road trip in the mountains together, we brought along all nine symphonies, and the combination of gorgeous music, gorgeous scenery, and of course, plenty of New Relationship Energy, made for an almost transcendent experience. […]
Dead Wild Roses: The DWR Friday Classical Interlude: for Paris, and Beirut, and Baghdad
(I’m writing this early in the week, for publication Friday. I’m dreading coming back and editing this list…) and Garissa, Kenya; Yola, Nigeria and all the places being terrorized by “our” side… Gustav Mahler wrote his song cycle Kindertotenlieder, Songs on the Death of Children, over a century ago, a setting of five (out of over […]
Dead Wild Roses: Abominations in Clown Barf
Almost every knitter or crocheter’s taste in yarn goes through a similar evolution as their skill progresses. When you’re just starting, everything takes forever, so thick yarns seem like a good idea – yay, fewer stitches makes more fabric! And you buy yarn based on how pretty the ball looks, without
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Friday Musical Interlude: Dramatic Soprano Style!
The singing year has started for me as well as the Arbourist. My teacher and I have set two goals for this year: That I will develop good practicing habits That I will finally let my big voice out at its full size In furtherance of these goals, she’s assigned
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