Ms Soapbox recently received a series of memes from an old white guy justifying his support of Trump’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-everything policies. She’s been seething ever since. Not because…
Photo by Brook Ward By the time San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand against oppression by taking a knee during the national anthem, it will…
The people of Gambo held their first mummers’ parade the December before last. The Gander Beacon, the weekly newspaper that covers events in Gambo, featured some pictures of the parade…
The people of Gambo held their first mummers’ parade the December before last. The Gander Beacon, the weekly newspaper that covers events in Gambo, featured some pictures of the parade…
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…
I’m convinced many Americans – Donald Trump among them – think Frank Capra’s famous film, It’s a Wonderful Life, was a documentary, not entertainment. It has all the elements of…
Profanum vulgus. The vulgar crowd. Not, however, as you might suspect, an apt description of the remaining few supporters of The Block that rules Collingwood Council. While perhaps appropriately described,…
Photo by Geoffrey Gallaway 2016 was quite the year. As the calendar winds down, some people are talking about 2016 as one of the worst years in human history, or…
Alas, Postumus, the swift years slip away. Those words are one translation of the opening line of the 14th Ode in the second book of Horace’s carminas, or songs: Eheu…
At the Nov. 28 Council meeting (seen here on Rogers TV), Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson blathered on in cliché-rich, lawerly manner (starting 1:14:05) about how much the Elvis Festival means…
Did I ever tell you about my short-lived career as an actual “ad-man”? *wavy remembery lines* Way back in the once-upon-a-time, there was a drama club. And that drama club…
I have a healthy skepticism towards anything labelled a “self-help” book – especially those that aim at making your life happier or more fulfilled through some fad, superstition or pseudoscience.…
If you’ve ever wondered why women are reluctant to bring forward allegations of sexual harassment, look no further than the furor unleashed when 15 female police officers contacted city councillor…
I came across an early version of this infographic on Facebook and it shook me to my core. You can see it here. The updated and corrected infographic is shown…
When a friend first told me that members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill were joining forces to “Make America Rage Again” with a musical “super…
It’s not like the halcyon days when I first started writing for newspapers, back in late 1969. Today, print media is struggling to survive in a world dominated by digital…
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…
Nowadays the “bucket list” concept has become a wildly popular cultural meme, thanks to the movie of the same name. Subsequent marketing of the idea to millennials has proven a…
An article in the September, 2016, issue of Doctor’s Review looks at the curious, compelling affliction called hypergraphia: the obsessive need to write. I never knew before this that there…
