I was thinking of the lines from that Fairport Convention song this week as we walked through Toronto on our three-day mini-holiday. I can still hear Sandy Denny’s wonderful, haunting voice singing the chorus of that dreamy, sad song, as … Continue reading →
Continue readingTag: Personal reminiscences
Chadwick's Blog & Commentary: A Little Uke on the Side
About 20 kilometres from home, while mentally playing the piece I had practiced all week, I asked myself if I had remembered to pack my tuner. I remembered taking it off the ukulele and placing it in my luggage. I … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Notes for a Spring Evening
Late spring, Saturday night, sitting here surrounded by the trees and garden in full bloom, everything lush and full of life, my view from the front porch of verdant trees and garden, everything so very green. Peaceful. Relaxing. Would that … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: When did I become my parents?
I was driving down to Toronto, Saturday, listening to a CD with Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and several other singers of my parents’ generation, singing along, and I wondered aloud, “When did I become my parents?” When did … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Appreciating B-Movies
It drives Susan to distraction that I love B-flicks. She squirms and fidgets if I put one into the DVD player and can seldom sit through an entire movie. They get cut off mid-film, and saved for me some time … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship
I was 8, maybe 9 years old, when my parents gave me a hardcover copy of Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship by Victor Appleton II. Probably a birthday or Xmas present. I can’t recall which. I just recall how … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Pulp Renaissance
In the late 1950s, I came across a copy (1912; an original edition, I believe) of Edgar Rice Burrough’s first published novel, Tarzan, The Ape Man, on my parent’s bookshelf in the basement. A forgotten book, one my father had … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Culloden and the Family Tree, 267 Years Later
It doesn’t begin with Culloden. History is seldom so neat and precise that a single event can be identified as the start or end of a thing. Rather, Culloden was a hinge, a point at which events changed direction, when … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Dreamtime
I don’t dream very much, Susan once said to me. We were having a talk about some crazy dream I was recalling. They’re always crazy, of course. But the conversation was about whether we dream – all of us – … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Consolation of Literature
For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And read about literature. Sometimes literature is made more meaningful, brought … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: To sleep, perchance to dream
Aye, there’s the rub. To sleep in, one weekend morning, when there are no pressures for meetings, work, deadlines. To roll away from the soft light that filters through the blinds and enjoy that delicious moment of closing your eyes … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: A Zen story
There are all sorts of great stories, great tales of wisdom and enlightenment, to be found in Zen Buddhism. They often have that sort of eternal depth and universal meaning to our lives, regardless of your personal beliefs. The one … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: 10,000 words too many
Been working the last two-and-a-half months on my latest book for Municipal World. A bit of a challenge, actually – trying to combine marketing, branding, advertising, public relations and communications topics into one coherent yet succinct package has been difficult. … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Is it time for a Collingwood ukulele group?
When a friend recently told me he had joined the new Guelph ukulele group, it made me somewhat envious. After all, having a local support-performance-practice-chat-socialize group for any hobby is always great. When your hobby is a passion that requires … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Scaramouche
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. That has to rank among the best opening lines in a novel, up there with Dickens’ “It was the best of times…” opening in … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: On being a left wing pinko socialist
My left-wing, pro-union friends would be amused to hear me called a “leftie.” They generally think of me as right as Steven Harper. The only difference to them, I suppose, is my unwillingness to sell Canada to the highest corporate … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Albert and the Lion
A recent comment on Facebook – “You just can’t resist poking the bear…”* made me remember a poem by Marriott Edgar that I enjoyed as a child in the 1950s: Albert and the Lion. I actually first heard it orally … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Not the expected blog post, I’m afraid
Sorry to disappoint those readers who expected this to be a blog post on ukuleles, tequila or our beautiful Mexican Sister City, Zihuatanejo (“Zee-hwa” for those in the know). I refer, of course, to comments in the recent parody video, in … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Musings on Game Design
An odd bit of synchronicity. I picked up a few unusual board games* at the discount/remainder store downtown (in the former Shoppers’ Drug Mart building) a couple of weeks back, and was mulling over their instructions, wondering why they seemed … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Happy New Year!
Happy New Year. 2012 is almost over. 2013 looms a few hours away. I wish you all the best of times in the upcoming year. What a year it’s been. For council, we flailed around in the tar-baby issues of the … Continue reading →
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