Musings on Reading the Bard Over a Year
Wonderful thing, the internet. You can type “complete works reading list Shakespeare” into a search engine and come up with dozens of lists with a recommended order for reading The…
Ian Chadwick
Council Fails Our Affordable Housing Residents
It’s ironic how Mayor Saunderson so loudly acclaimed the “Community-based strategic plan” last term (a document that was neither community-based nor a strategic plan) yet when a major issue arises…
Musings on the Complete Works
When the Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works arrived this week (an early birthday gift from my wife who might have wanted to hide it until the actual date… oops… I saw…
As Important as Clean Drinking Water? Part 2
Remember last December, when the town’s CAO announced that the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) was “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water”?…
We’re Doomed. Doomed, I tell you.
While walking our dog recently, we encountered another couple “our age” (somewhere between 65 and 90) also walking their dog. While the two pets sniffed and frolicked, we chatted with…
Musings on Shakespearean Apocrypha
When the First Folio was published in 1623, it had 36 of the Bard’s plays, listed in three categories: histories, tragedies, and comedies (it didn’t include his longer poems, or…
Developers Bite Back at ICBL
‘The town created its own emergency’: Collingwood developer says project on hold due to water capacity issues. So reads the headline on a story on Simcoe.com. I laughed and laughed at…
Musings on Housework
Susan lugged the laundry hampers down to the lavandería we often used in Zihuatanejo when we vacationed there; a small shop on the sidestreet where laundresses would weigh the hampers,…
Musings on Aesop and Local Politics
I’ve always liked reading “wisdom tales”; I still read and delight in those Zen Buddhist stories that Paul Reps recounted in his book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which I first…
The Irony of Council’s Obsession
Oh, the delicious irony. A council that has been so obsessed with the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) at the expense of everything important in this town is…
Yet More Secrecy From Council
A “special” council meeting has been called for May 19. Now, when this council says ‘special” they almost always mean they scurry behind closed doors to avoid public scrutiny of…
Musings on Montaigne’s Cannibals
Montaigne’s essay On Cannibals contributed at least some of the content and ideas in Shakespeare’s late play, The Tempest. A speech by the recently-shipwrecked counsellor Gonzalo in Act 2, Sc.1…
Musings on Shakespeare’s Anachronisms
When the clock struck three in Julius Caesar, you probably scratched your head, knowing that striking clocks didn’t exist two millennia ago in the play’s setting. In Caesar’s time, people…
A Conspiracy So Immense
It’s a common theme in today’s political analysis to argue that Donald Trump broke America. Looking at the ongoing dumpster fire that is the Repugnican Party, the rise of white…
Musings on Art and Taste
Many years ago, I had a lengthy correspondence with a friend in another part of Canada about what constitutes art. His basic argument was that art was not neutral or…
Musings on Shakespeare’s Goodbye
Prospero’s words in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, have long been thought to have been Shakespeare’s own goodbye to the theatrical world, assuming, of course, you are reading the play or…
Musings on Cats and Philosophers
British philosopher John Gray thinks cats can “often teach us much more about living the good life than philosophy ever could.” As a lifetime cat owner, I can vouch for…
More Musings on Shakespeare
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002) has a short but insightful essay on the texts of Shakespeare that illustrates the choices…
Musing on the Authorship Question Again
The “authorship question” — who wrote Shakespeare’s works, aside that is, from Shakespeare himself — is a conspiracy that seems a metaphor for modern society. It contains the seeds of…
Water Crisis? What Crisis?
You’d think that a town with a supposed water crisis so acute it had to pass a job-killing, revenue-depleting bylaw to stop all new construction for the next two (or…