Author: Ian Chadwick

Retired writer, editor, reviewer, media relations & communications consultant, municipal politician. Ukulele player. Aficionado of Shakespeare, Horace, Machiavelli, Chaucer, Cicero, Homer, socialism, science, Godzilla, ERB, & tequila. Curmudgeon, skeptic & cynic. Lay historian. Community volunteer. PC gamer. Avid reader. Woke socialist. Loving husband. Companion to one dog & three cats. Passionate about my small town. Perennially curious about everything. My writing is copyright © protected.

Plato, Music and Misquotes

I spent a pleasant morning, Saturday, browsing through the works of Plato, hunting for the source of a quotation I saw on Facebook, today.* I did several textual searches for words, phrases and quotes on sites that offer his collected works, along with other works by classical authors. Now I must admit that in my reading, I have not read everything Plato wrote. I’ve read several dialogues, and then mostly pieces from his works. Reading the entire Republic has, sadly, defeated me, but I have it available for another try when I retire. Despite my unfamiliarity with his full canon, ……… click below for more ↓

The Missing Lines

2013-04-19 2018-03-20 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Literary pretensions / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The National Museum of Iraq – known originally as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum – once housed some of the oldest works of literature in the world. Treasures from the origins of civilization, from the cities of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria were on display*. In 2003, when the Americans invaded**, a battle was fought between US and Iraqi forces at the museum. The Iraqi troops fled, and looters came in. According to Wikipedia: According to museum officials the looters concentrated on the heart of the exhibition: “the Warka Vase, a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5,000 years old; a bronze Uruk statue from ……… click below for more ↓

Profundity

2013-04-17 2013-05-01 Arts / Culture / Literary pretensions / My WritingLeave a comment

In 1923, William Carlos Williams wrote one of the most profound poems in the English language: The Red Wheelbarrow. It reads like a Japanese Zen haiku: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. Wikipedia tells us that the poem’s title is not its original, but rather one applied by its readers. The poem was first published in anthology titled Spring and All. The poem itself was simply titled “XXII,” indicating its place in the collection. Referring to the poem as “The Red Wheelbarrow” has been frowned upon by some critics, including Neil Easterbrook, ……… click below for more ↓

April, the cruellest month

2013-04-15 2013-05-01 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of filing one’s taxes before month end, always a painful chore. I started thinking about April while watching the movie, 1911, about the Chinese uprising against the Qing Dynasty, in 1911 (saw it this weekend). Fascinating period of Chinese history that led to the first republic under Sun Yat Sen, but, I wondered, was it so interesting elsewhere? Yes, it seems ……… click below for more ↓

The open government report

2013-04-11 2013-05-01 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

On Monday’s agenda, council received a 21-page report from the clerk on the nature and mechanics of open government in Collingwood. This comprehensive report, titled the “Accountability and Transparency Policy,” because it also introduced a revised, formal policy, listed all of the bylaws, policies and legislation by which council and staff operate. This is such an important and useful report that I felt it worthwhile to extract it from the April 13 agenda and make it available separately here. If you have not read it, or have any questions about how a council works and the rules that guide us, it’s ……… click below for more ↓

Culloden and the Family Tree, 267 Years Later

2013-03-31 2020-11-11 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Places & Geography / War & MilitaryOne Comment

It doesn’t begin with Culloden. History is seldom so neat and precise that a single event can be identified as the start or end of a thing. Rather, Culloden was a hinge, a point at which events changed direction, when the door to the past was closed and one to a very different future opened. You might say it really begins centuries earlier, in the long, bitter wars between England and Scotland that trace their roots to the Norman conquerors. But that’s too vague and longwinded. It would be better to say it the introduction to the story was written ……… click below for more ↓

The Dreamtime

2013-03-29 2013-03-29 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

I don’t dream very much, Susan once said to me. We were having a talk about some crazy dream I was recalling. They’re always crazy, of course. But the conversation was about whether we dream – all of us – whenever we sleep. I argued yes, we all do. We just don’t always remember them. I remember a lot of mine, at least for a few minutes after I awake. It helps if I talk about them right away, otherwise they evaporate pretty quickly. That’s the nature of dreaming: it’s just the random firing of neurons that activate memory, but ……… click below for more ↓

Enter Christopher Marlowe – Again

2013-03-27 2013-03-27 Arts / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. The challenge to his authorship isn’t new: for the last three centuries it’s been the most popular whodunit of literature: trying to uncover the true identity of the author of the world’s greatest dramas and comedies. I can’t think of another author of note in the world who is considered not to have written the works under which his or her name is penned. Even Shakespeare’s many contemporaries are considered ……… click below for more ↓

Speaking with the dead

2013-03-26 2013-03-26 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Can the dead speak to us from beyond the grave? No, of course not. But that doesn’t stop literally millions of superstitious people from believing they do. And some think they can use technology to facilitate the conversation. Of course, when you put technology into the mix, it simply cements the belief in place, no matter how ludicrous. And the internet has provided a platform for this silliness to reach worldwide. A recent post on the BBC website made me do some investigation. The BBC story is really about EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVP, as Wikipedia tells us, is: …electronically ……… click below for more ↓

Clawing our way back up the ladder?

2013-03-21 2013-03-21 Collingwood / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

In 2006, Moneysense listed Collingwood as the 11th best place to live in Canada. The other ten above us on that list were all major cities. We were the number one town. Mayor Geddes beamed. Today we’re a lot further down the list. Numero 54 to be exact, out of 200. I wrote about that list back in 2011. We plummeted from the giddy heights of 11th place to 61st by 2008. The fall didn’t stop until we hit 94th place in 2012, in the bottom half of the 180 places listed. Now we’re back at 54th place. I suppose ……… click below for more ↓

Understanding the Municipal Act

2013-03-21 2013-03-21 Collingwood / Media Issues / Municipal Politics2 Comments

Among the many pieces of legislation, bylaws and policies that guide and inform municipal councils in Ontario, the Municipal Act is the most important.* This 238-page, 140,000-word, 474-section document covers most of the things that govern municipal councils: powers, duties, highways, public utilities, waste management, fences and signs, animals, economic development, environment, licensing, municipal reorganization, municipal service boards, BIAs, boards and committees, integrity commissioners, transparency, open and in-camera meetings, financial administration, taxation, fees, bylaw enforcement, bonusing. …and many other topics. Clearly a document of this size and scope requires more than one reading to grasp. Some areas do not arise ……… click below for more ↓

Shaolin: the film

2013-03-17 2013-03-21 Arts / Film & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Music & Reviews / PoliticsLeave a comment

I like Chinese films, particularly the epic wuxia films. They are often a refreshing change from the effects-driven/CGI monstrosities pumped out by Hollywood. They remind me of the westerns of the 1950s, usually with good and bad sides in stark relief. Subtitles don’t bother me (better them than dubbed). I’ve watched the Chinese film industry mature over the past three decades and the quality has become remarkable. Cinematography is sometimes breathtaking. One of the most appealing aspects is that they tend to do more with people than with special effects, which gives crowd scenes a more human, less manufactured feel. Gotta ……… click below for more ↓

The Consolation of Literature

2013-03-14 2013-03-14 Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And read about literature. Sometimes literature is made more meaningful, brought into sharper focus by analysis and deconstruction. I started reading Shakespeare’s Shakespeare: How the Plays Were Made (John C Meagher, Continuum, New York, 2000) last night. He opens by saying: There are as many legitimate ways of reading Shakespeare’s plays as there are of having a conversation, making a meal, or rearing children. I suppose we assign meaning to whatever ……… click below for more ↓