A Nanos poll reported in The Globe and Mail says that Stephen Harper's decision to add the designation "Royal" to the names of Canada's Air Force and Navy would boost…
As I said earlier, I've been catching up on my usual walks now that we're back in the house. Last year I was delighted to find that ducks had raised…
On Sunday friend and neighbor Adrienne Jones handed on this link to a Salon.com article on why it is in the interest of the rich to be taxed more. Basically,…
Despite 35 years of metric in Canada, construction is all in the old inches and feet mode, while temperature, speed and some kind of food are metric. What accounts for…
The gates to Mount Royal cemetery don't look like this now. About a year and a half ago fissures were found in the mortar holding the big stone blocks--put in…
Back to working on the next novel, called River Music. One of the main characters is a Canadian woman pianist who becomes celebrated, in part because her version of Debussy"s…
These musical swings (each one produced a particular tone) were around for a short period this spring, and I had hoped to try them out, but each time I passed…
As I ran around trying to found what I've put away while admiring the nice things about our reconstructed house, I came across a story in today's New York Times…
The pictures of burning buildings in Britain are extremely disturbing, not least because we know first hand how much damage a fire can do. But the question arises: why? It…
Stephen Harper was in Brazil yesterday, and met with dthat country's former guerilla president Dilma Rousseff. He listened, apparently, while she told reporters about how solide Brazil's economy was and…
" On of the pleasures of being back in an almost-settled house is that we have more time to intersting things. Friends called yesterday to ask if we'd like to…
First special dinner since we've moved back. Jeanne and her parents, paella and fruit salad with Ontario peaches and BC cherries. What a nice prospect!
Just in case you wondered if things were getting better, here's a link to a breaking story in The New York Times. The job figures for July in the US…
The guy in this video is a piker--on 64 boxes. But we had similar surprises as we opened boxes. Perhaps it should be no surprise that I've filled 8 large…
Last week Elin and company spent time in Greater Chicago. She taught at the Viola da Gamba Society of America's annual Conclave, and the rest of the family spent some…
but the stuff hasn't been put away yet. The house is nearly as big a mess as the state of the world.I'll be back with before- and after pix as…
There is not likely to be much here over the next few days. The boxes arrived yesterday--something like 450 of them containing about 5,000 books and the various collections of…
As usual, Paul Krugman today is right on the money. "Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage," he says. Part of the problem is "the cult of “balance,” the insistence…
As a sidebar to the previous posting about WalMart advertising on classical music stations, check out the interesting article in The New Yorker about WalMart heiress Alice Walton and her…
We've been listening to the commerical classical music station a lot over the last few months. Partly, it's fatigue--there is so much to do just keeping afloat plus taking care…
