More Musings on Shakespeare

Literature / Shakespeare / ShakespeareOne Comment

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The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002) has a short but insightful essay on the texts of Shakespeare that illustrates the choices editors have made when dealing with the texts they want to present their version to the public. It uses a single, well-known verse from Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Sc.2, lines 40-44 in the Pelican and many other editions) in which Juliet speaks: What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in ……… click below for more ↓

Musing on the Authorship Question Again

Books & Reviews / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The “authorship question” — who wrote Shakespeare’s works, aside that is, from Shakespeare himself — is a conspiracy that seems a metaphor for modern society.  It contains the seeds of many popular conspiracies within it: pseudoscience, suspicions about authority, declarations of revelation, blind faith, angry defences, opinions and interpretations, Youtube quacks, amateurs posing as researchers, wild claims, and the paranoia we find on social media. You can find its counterparts in alien abductions, chemtrails, Pizzagate, Trump’s election victory, pro-disease/anti-vaccination protests, astrology, creationism,  Bigfoot, Atlantis, and Elvis is still alive: a whole passel of piffle seems born from it. And it ……… click below for more ↓

Water Crisis? What Crisis?

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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You’d think that a town with a supposed water crisis so acute it had to pass a job-killing, revenue-depleting bylaw to stop all new construction for the next two (or four or more) years, would rush to fix a leak that lets treated water run into the storm sewers. But for three weeks, the town has let this leak on Sproule Ave. run away, doing nothing more than placing safety cones around it. You also might wonder why no one on council asked staff if there were ongoing leaks or related problems that needed repair BEFORE the bylaw was passed ……… click below for more ↓

$17,297.48 For One SVJI Meeting!

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry2 Comments

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John Megarry filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting the town provide the costs of having the two lawyers from the town’s inquiry legal team speak online to council for one meeting in February. The amount for that single event seems gobsmackingly high, considering it was done virtually and not in person: $17,297.48!  Just a reminder: the legal team for the inquiry was sole-sourced last term; appointed in violation of both the town’s procurement policy and breaking Brian Saundersons’ earlier election promise of “no exceptions” to tendering any contracts over $25,000. The previous council in which Saunderson was deputy mayor ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Petty Vindictiveness on Display

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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If you ever doubted our mayor, Brian Saunderson, was engaged in a petty, personal vendetta against people who thwarted him in 2012, you only need to read a recent article in CollingwoodToday, titled, Council to hire lawyer for potential action against parties involved in judicial inquiry. And, as usual, our secretive council scurried behind closed doors to hold their discussions in order to make their decision outside the scrutiny of the public’s eyes: After a closed session discussion this evening (May 3), council returned to public session to pass a motion (6-2) in favour of hiring BLG law firm to ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 28

Cancer / Daily life / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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This month marks a year since my biopsy that indicated I had an aggressive form of prostate cancer. It’s been quite a year for me, easily the most stressful and challenging of my life. The challenges of dealing with cancer were compounded by the pandemic that spawned lockdowns and restrictive access protocols that soon became a regular part of my and everyone else’s life. This anniversary is not a celebration, simply a recognition, although Susan and I have raised a glass to my having survived. There are many more people who have not survived their cancer. I am one of ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Downsizing Shakespeare

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Shakespeare2 Comments

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While downsizing my library earlier this spring (25-30 boxes of books already removed from the shelves and some titles still left to cull), I had to think about what books to keep. This was tough for me, what with my passion for books and reading, parting with any book, especially one I’ve had for decades, can be like losing a child or a pet.  But I persevered with my purge (with Susan making sure I did…). I looked at every shelf to first decide which titles no longer served a need (used previously for my work, but now I’ve retired ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson Follows Stalin’s Lead

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry4 Comments

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In the 1930s, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin removed his political rivals and enemies from history. Literally: he had their images brushed out of photographs, their names removed from books. Those he didn’t like simply disappeared from public notice. Kim Jong Un and Mao Tse Tung similarly erased their opponents. And now our own mayor wants to follow the example set by these dictators. But while photos were Stalin’s weapons in his purge, bronze plaques are Saunderson’s. You can read about the latest Stalinist purge in the CAO’s report for the upcoming Strategic Initiatives Committee, May 3. The 20-page report* ……… click below for more ↓

We Need New Names for Stupid

Conspiracy Theories / Health & Medicine / Pandemic issues and events / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & Disorder2 Comments

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I was reading a story in CollingwoodToday about another anti-mask/anti-lockdown protest recently — this one in Barrie, Sat. April 24 — and thought to myself that our language does not have the appropriate words to describe the combination of selfishness, stupidity, and ignorance that fuels this sort of event. Sure, we have lots of individual words to describe these people, but it seems the pandemic has brought out a unique combination of attributes that deserve their own vocabulary.  This was the seventh such rally in Barrie alone. Who knew there were so many covidiots* there? The article says they were ……… click below for more ↓

ICBL: Another Reason Saunderson Should Resign

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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Mayor Saunderson continues his job-hunting campaign to get out of his mayoral responsibilities and become our riding’s next MPP. Yet this week he also set himself up for more accusations of conflicts of interest, both real and apparent — the sort castigated in his beloved Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) with its 306 mostly irrelevant or redundant recommendations (but ignored by him and his council).* That’s because the town’s new interim control bylaw (ICBL) that kills construction and jobs, has provisions for proponents to beg for exceptions. Developers are going to be lining up to do so because ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Job-Killing ICBL Continued

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Hospital / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Uncategorized6 Comments

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James Madison, one of the US’s Founding Fathers said that a government “…without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a tragedy or a farce, or perhaps both.” Sure reads like someone describing our own council and their refusal to listen to the public during their discussion on the recent interim control bylaw (ICBL) that killed growth, development, and jobs in Collingwood: both a farce and a tragedy.* Thomas Vincent, developer of the Balmoral Estates adult lifestyle community in Collingwood,  wrote a letter to council just before this debacle, criticizing among other things, the ……… click below for more ↓

ICBL Sinks Development and Saunderson’s MPP Dream

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ineptitude and bungling / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry2 Comments

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I wonder if our mayor, Brian Saunderson, gave any thought to what last night’s vote to kill construction in Collingwood might do to his dream of becoming our riding’s next MPP? I’d say both went down the tube when the draconian, interim control bylaw to stop providing building permits (the ICBL) was passed. In one meeting, our mayor and his cabal managed to alienate pretty much every developer and builder who was a potential supporter and donor to his campaign. And with them went the local real estate business, whose lifeblood is in the new home industry. Everyone in the ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Epic Blunder

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Utilities: electricity and water14 Comments

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A blunder of epic proportions? A sobering display of supreme incompetence and ineptitude? A total failure of communications, direction, and leadership? An underhanded excuse to hand our municipal water services over to a private corporation without public consultation? A rudderless municipal government fumbling from one crisis to the next with no future planning? An unprecedented assault against our neighbouring municipalities? Another attack on the construction industry by an anti-development council? Or all of the above? Whatever your view, this debacle falls on the shoulders of the mayor, Brian Saunderson. He’s the leader, the spokesperson, where the buck stops.  The headline ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Viruses and Evolution

Books & Reviews / Creationism / Evolution & Paleontology / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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One has to wonder how creationists can maintain their beliefs during a pandemic where the virus is clearly evolving to improve its ability to infect people and avoid immune system responses. It’s like watching Darwin in action every day. What sort of cognitive dissonance is necessary to believe in creationism while reading the headlines about COVID variants emerging all over the world? Or maybe they don’t read the news to avoid being confronted by such inconvenient truths. Although viruses evolve mostly through mutations of their genetic code (DNA or RNA in the case of COVID-19), it is still Darwin’s natural ……… click below for more ↓

When Did I Become My Parents?

Humour & Satire / My Writing / PoetryLeave a comment

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When Did I Become My Parents? When did I stop listening to new music, and change the dial to something familiar: oldies, classic rock; comfortable tunes? When did I stop driving a standard, shifting gears with practiced precision, and buy an automatic, with power windows, and heated seats? When did I stop riding a motorcycle? When did I stop remembering what’s on the grocery list?

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