For those of you in Toronto Thursday March 22, please come to a presentation of Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure at the Centro de Lingua Portuguesa Camões at 5:30…
This is one of my favourites songs, one I always turn to this time of year. It was written for the Brazilian March, which is the season of rain that…
We’ve had a nice snowfalls in the last week, and it actually looks invitingly winterish outside. But we’re scheduled to have some quite warm weather over the last next few…
This would be hilarious, if it weren’t so sad. The poster’s by Matthew Cope: good work!
One of the things that struck me when I was in Shanghai five years ago was the number of adolescent boys on school outings. I knew, of course, that there…
Thursday I’m going to be talking about oing to be talking about Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure as part of the Atwater Library’s Lunchtime series. There will be music…
We always knew the Conservatives were comtemptuous of democracy, and now we have even more proof with the robocall dirty tricks of May 2. Somebody up high had to okay…
This week I’m going over the latest version of my next novel River Music. “Some Enchanted Evening” the Rogers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific, has insinuated its way into…
Happy little girl that she is, Jeanne has faced the world with a smile since she was tiny. She has not been phased or frightened by much…until she started to…
This story is not likely to get much play in English Canada, but it ought to. Alain Saulnier, the head of information services (radio, TV, internet) at Radio Canada, was…
Extra-billing and kick-backs to doctors in Quebec have been in the news these last couple of days. First the Quebec College of Physicians charged that at least two cardiologists have…
The Atlantic has an interesting feature about using Identikits, those visual aids used by police to figure out who might have done it, to draw portraits of characters from fiction.…
As usual, Paul Krugman is worth reading to day. He once again points out just how counter-productive austerity measures have been in keeping Europe afloat. What he says should be…
Gastroenteritis has attacked, and a number of family members are writhing away. Won’t last, of course, but it would be a lot nicer to rest in the sun in a…
Jeanne had a stomach flu earlier in the week, but seems to be better. Her mother, however, came down with it shortly after the two of them arrived to spend…
The New York Times has a fine story today about classical music bringing social change in Venezuale: “Fighting Poverty, Armed with Violins.” El Sistema, an innovative way of making music…
If there are two words that I use with scorn, they are “flake” and “princess.” In my mind they sum up a panoply of selfish, unhelpful characteristics. The latter I…
The photo isn’t new–I used it two years ago, but I still like it a lot. As for the holiday, well, it’s problematic. Just another opportunity to sell something? For…
It’s book discussion week, which kicks off with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby tonight in Pierrefonds. I had kept rereading the book to the last since the three others…
