Musings on the Complete Works

Books & Reviews / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / ShakespeareOne Comment

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When the Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works arrived this week (an early birthday gift from my wife who might have wanted to hide it until the actual date… oops… I saw the postie arrive…), I thought it might be time to put together a spreadsheet identifying some of the key differences between the various versions of the “complete works” in my library, and among those other editions I don’t own (but may in the future). This is meant to help me select which version I might want to read from at any time. In fact, it’s my goal to read ALL ……… click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water? Part 2

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Utilities: electricity and waterOne Comment

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Remember last December, when the town’s CAO announced that the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) was “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water”? Today, that statement would seem to be egg on her face, given more recent events (and the public’s utter lack of interest in the SVJI). Priorities like “clean drinking water” certainly take on a new light, when you consider how long council ignored our drinking water until it suddenly became a “crisis” that required a knee-jerk reaction. Council quickly passed a job-killing, revenue-killing, growth-killing bylaw to deal with it. And ……… click below for more ↓

We’re Doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

Aging / Conspiracy Theories / Cults / Health & Medicine / Personal Reminiscences / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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While walking our dog recently, we encountered another couple “our age” (somewhere between 65 and 90) also walking their dog. While the two pets sniffed and frolicked, we chatted with them (at a safe distance, of course). And, as might be expected during a lengthy pandemic, one of the first questions we asked them was, “Have you had your shot yet?” Shockingly, they both answered, “No! And we’re not going to get one.” My first thought when I heard this, “We’re doomed.” These are people we’ve spoken with before while our dogs met. They aren’t friends, merely acquaintances. Yet before ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Shakespearean Apocrypha

Shakespeare / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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When the First Folio was published in 1623, it had 36 of the Bard’s plays, listed in three categories: histories, tragedies, and comedies (it didn’t include his longer poems, or the sonnets)*. And even then, these were not all of his plays. Several were not included, although they were known to the folio’s compilers. For reasons unknown, there were several plays missing from the original canon, including Pericles, Prince of Tyre; The Two Noble Kinsmen; Edward III;  The Book of Sir Thomas More; Cardenio; and Love’s Labour’s Won. The latter two are “lost” (more on that, later); the rest are ……… click below for more ↓

Developers Bite Back at ICBL

Collingwood / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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‘The town created its own emergency’: Collingwood developer says project on hold due to water capacity issues. So reads the headline on a story on Simcoe.com. I laughed and laughed at the risible hypocrisy when I read this line in it: “Addressing the water treatment plant expansion and the water capacity issue is one of the town’s highest priorities,” said Mayor Brian Saunderson. “The town is aggressively pursuing remedies to address the water capacity issue.” The water capacity “crisis” is a self-made debacle created and maintained by the current council. The majority of them knew it was coming back in 2015! ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Housework

Blog & Blogging / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Susan lugged the laundry hampers down to the lavandería we often used in Zihuatanejo when we vacationed there; a small shop on the sidestreet where laundresses would weigh the hampers, quote a price, and a time to come back to collect the cleaned clothes. The relentless Mexican sun made the streets and sidewalks an oven as she walked back to the house where we stayed. She wondered if it was too early to open a cold beer. Meanwhile, I walked through the tall grasses on the plain, bending under an equally fierce sun a continent away, pushing my staff ahead ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Aesop and Local Politics

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I’ve always liked reading “wisdom tales”; I still read and delight in those Zen Buddhist stories that Paul Reps recounted in his book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which I first encountered in the late 1960s. Not long after that, I discovered the many tales of the Mulla Nasrudin retold by Idries Shah, and the stories of the Wise Men of Chelm, the imaginary city of fools in Jewish folklore. Decades later, I still have most of these books. I suspect, however, little of the implied wisdom in them has rubbed off on me, yet I persist in reading them. Around ……… click below for more ↓

The Irony of Council’s Obsession

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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Oh, the delicious irony. A council that has been so obsessed with the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) at the expense of everything important in this town is suddenly now all aflutter over traffic calming and street safety. Yeah, right… Since they were first elected, our myopic councillors have done nothing about our streets, about walkability, pedestrian safety, traffic calming, or bicycle lanes — much less fix our decaying pavement and crumbling sidewalks. In fact, since most of them were on the previous council, their egregious inactivity on these issues extends back more than six years. But who’s ……… click below for more ↓

Yet More Secrecy From Council

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / EntitlementOne Comment

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A “special” council meeting has been called for May 19. Now, when this council says ‘special” they almost always mean they scurry behind closed doors to avoid public scrutiny of their machinations. And, yep, they’re at it again: locking themselves away from the public eye, and sending a clear message about the credibility of their promised openness and transparency. The topic of discussion this time? Cultural Awareness Training.” Since when was that something that should be done in secret? That seems the sort of education that everyone in public could benefit from, not just councillors. So either it’s something else ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Montaigne’s Cannibals

Books & Reviews / Philosophy / ShakespeareOne Comment

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Montaigne’s essay On Cannibals contributed at least some of the content and ideas in Shakespeare’s late play, The Tempest. A speech by the recently-shipwrecked counsellor Gonzalo in Act 2, Sc.1 about creating a utopian community on the island is lifted almost word-for-word from this essay.* Montaigne’s other essays might have added to other of The Bard’s plays as well, although we can’t be sure when he read the Essays. If it was at the time he was writing The Tempest, by then (1611) Shakespeare was not writing as much and his time with the theatre was coming to an end ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Shakespeare’s Anachronisms

Language & Grammar / Meaning of words / ShakespeareLeave a comment

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When the clock struck three in Julius Caesar, you probably scratched your head, knowing that striking clocks didn’t exist two millennia ago in the play’s setting. In Caesar’s time, people checked sundials or water clocks (clepsydra), neither of which — inconveniently for the Bard — chimed. It would be almost 1,300 years after Caesar that the first “weight-driven mechanical clock was recorded in England” (in1283). It’s just one of several well-known anachronisms in Shakespeare’s plays. Roman timekeeping by sundial also meant that hours varied from 45 to 75 minutes long, depending on the season, and no one could use one ……… click below for more ↓

A Conspiracy So Immense

Books & Reviews / Politics / US Politics2 Comments

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It’s a common theme in today’s political analysis to argue that Donald Trump broke America. Looking at the ongoing dumpster fire that is the Repugnican Party, the rise of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-science, pro-disease, misogynist, pseudo-religious, and anti-justice groups into the centre of the party’s power seems clear evidence of Trump’s deleterious effect on both the party and democracy. It’s difficult to argue convincingly America isn’t broken these days, and that Trump isn’t the reason.  But as damaging as Trump continues to be, he didn’t start the downhill slide. The party was broken decades before Trump ever thought of entering ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Art and Taste

Arts / Collingwood / Culture / Daily life / Philosophy / Pop CultureOne Comment

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Many years ago, I had a lengthy correspondence with a friend in another part of Canada about what constitutes art. His basic argument was that art was not neutral or generic, but was the final product of high achievement: real art was “good” art. That is, art was defined by recognized masters and their works. Mona Lisa was art, Picasso was art, Monet was art — solely because they hung in galleries. It took cultural recognition or at least acceptance to make the change from simply a “work” to being art, according to my friend. You could, according to his ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Shakespeare’s Goodbye

Books & Reviews / Shakespeare2 Comments

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Prospero’s words in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, have long been thought to have been Shakespeare’s own goodbye to the theatrical world, assuming, of course, you are reading the play or at least these speeches as autobiographical. After all, The Tempest was the last play The Bard wrote by himself. He did, of course, work in collaboration for at least two more plays (Pericles and All is True aka Henry VIII). No one can be quite sure of this order because dating the plays is inexact, records have been lost, and scholarly arguments over who collaborated on what sections of these ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Cats and Philosophers

Books & Reviews / Cancer / PhilosophyLeave a comment

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British philosopher John Gray thinks cats can “often teach us much more about living the good life than philosophy ever could.” As a lifetime cat owner, I can vouch for cats serving as metaphors for all sorts of things, but not usually as philosophers outside some children’s books. That statement intrigued me because my prior association with cats and philosophers had been mostly limited to Michel de Montaigne‘s musing about animal consciousness and the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat. Gray was interviewed on the CBC, recently about his new book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life,  in which ……… click below for more ↓

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