I keep working over and over again on the one great essay which can make everything important clear at last. Of course, with every pass the goal recedes for a very obvious reason – as simple as my desire to be helpful
Eternal proof – one person’s mind can change the world Here’s one for my pal David Spencer – a fellow fan of longstanding. It also serves as a funny sidebar to my lovely Vale of Avoca walk a few days ago. For
The Quarry and the Years of Growth (as always, click top pic for high-res gallery) Yellow Creek may be mediated by stone – but nature works with what it finds Like many of my photographically inclined friends around the world, I’ve been
HEY WOW – COOL NEW SUPER-CLEAR REMIX As of July 2022! (OMG do I ever wish I’d replaced my ancient ‘cans’ sooner) ;o) So, funny thing, my back is twisted into a pretzel, my time-tapping foot was twitching in my sleep last
Note: these images were photographed at the Ryerson Image Centre (which does expressly allow non-flash photography) as part of their excellent 2017 show: Attica USA 1971: Images and sounds of a rebellion. And do visit the (free) Ryerson Image Centre when they
I got this lovely picture and quote from my brilliant cartoonist and illustrator friend Joseph Salina a few years ago, and I’ve kept it on my desktop ever since. Doris Lessing has been one of my greatest heroes since I was a
Hello my friends – here’s a podcast which brings together our shared strange experience of pausing normalcy, and several themes I’ve talked about before, and makes something of them. You don’t have to have listened to anything else I’ve posted for it
Today’s podcast is about some of the reasons that sincere people have fought for progress for many years, and yet have somehow lost ground. It is also about the sort of opposition which really scares the forces which conspire to deny our
Hi folks! Time for another hard truth and a big hug. Today: “You can’t guilt a fascist.” But so what – what harm is there in any catharsis – ultimately paradoxical or not? The harm is that it throws off our aim,
Hey folks – seems a good time for a rainy-day show, with a few ideas about things we can do to stave off frustration, when we are forced to put all of the projects we’d planned on-hold, for an indefinite time. Part
Hello my friends – here’s the latest episode of “Hard Truth and a Big Hug”. It’s a small part of a book that I haven’t yet got around to publishing – but I thought the big ideas and the final take-away were
Our friends already know that my extraordinary wife Catherine and I have been facing down a frightening health challenge lately. She was hospitalized a few months ago, and again more recently, for comparatively minor complications to a previously undiagnosed and life threatening
Hey friends, here’s another brand new all original edition of Hard Truth and a Big Hug – by far the most topical episode I have yet attempted – pandemic edition, no less – though my points are still, as usual, braced very
Hello friends – here’s a brand new episode of – Hard Truth and a Big Hug – today I’m talking about what we care most about, what we pay attention to – and what gets ignored and begins to wither away, when
Tradesmen must not (top photo) Let me begin by saying the sort of discrimination and mentality indicated by the sign above is not my idea of excellent at all – except – by the time I grew familiar with this sign –
Hello, my friends – time for another episode of Hard Truth and a Big Hug – this time I want to talk about some forgotten history, which might add some new perspective to struggles too often seen and felt only in the
Here’s a much shorter podcast – again from a vintage essay which has held up rather well over the years. Our own special in-house blend of funny, true and practical ideas. Hope you enjoy it. It is popular for us to think
Toronto has a lot of streets with their own particular flavour, I’ve mentioned Yonge St and Queen St many times, as their cultural significance and wonky charisma warrant, but you can’t even begin to understand Toronto at all without considering the character
With/as flowers (top photo) Hello, my friends – Podcast time once again. There is a lot of talk about moral ideas these days – but we don’t often discuss the nature of the human creatures that think and feel these things. Surface-level
It’s all about the flight-hours (top photo) I think “How to do anything” is one of the best short things I’ve ever written – holds up and has proven useful to many people for many years (and also provoked laughs from a