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.

Council’s First Year Reviewed

2015-12-24 2015-12-24 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

As we come close to the end of 2015, it’s time to take stock of what your Collingwood Council has accomplished in its first year in office. Let me start by saying it’s up to you to decide whether we have the best people at the table to represent our needs. Or are they gormless, brainless, pursing a political agenda set for them by unelected outsiders, and/or blindly following the lead of administration staff? It is up to you to decide whether they have lived up to their election promises or led this town astray. First, here’s the complete list of everything council has ……… click below for more ↓

Consultants Run Amok

2015-12-22 2015-12-23 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes2 Comments

As the old saw says, a consultant is someone who comes in to solve a problem and stays around long enough to become part of it. So how many consultants’ reports does it take for council to figure out we’re spending too much money on consultants’ reports? More than three, apparently. Three is the number of consultants’ reports included in the preliminary budget alone (the one that recommends raising your taxes almost 4% and gives council another pay increase as a reward for doing so…!). Three consultants’ reports… one would be an unprecedented number in a small town town budget. Three is, well, ……… click below for more ↓

Teas or Tisanes?

2015-12-19 2015-12-19 Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / Tea & coffeeOne Comment

I suppose it’s crotchety of me, but whenever I hear the term “herbal tea” used to refer to an infusion of leaves or fruits that contains no actual tea, I get shirty. They’re actually not tea at all, they’re tisanes, a pleasant French word that means’herbal infusion.’ They should be called such and labelled appropriately in stores. Tea is, properly a plant originally from China: Camellia sinensis. How the word came to be used as a descriptor for any hot drink in which leaves were infused or decocted, I don’t know, but it’s lazy language; misleading and dishonest.* Tea drink ……… click below for more ↓

Myth and Meaning

2015-12-19 2015-12-19 Books & Reviews / Culture / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about, and that’s what these clues help us find within ourselves. So says Joseph Campbell in an interview with Bill Moyers, 1987, published in the book, The Power of Myth. The book is based on ……… click below for more ↓

Why I Still Watch MAS*H

2015-12-18 2015-12-18 Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture / TVOne Comment

The news of Harry Morgan’s death at 96, back in 2011, saddened me. I’m at the age when it seems far too many icons of my youth are dying off. Not from some misspent life or accident; from old age. And the process accelerates as I age. I now understand why my grandparents and then parents read the newspaper obituaries. I haven’t quite succumbed to that, but I’m sure the day will come. No, I’m not being morbid. Or maudlin. I have, I believe, a healthy attitude towards death. Death moves me, sometimes fascinates me (as our collective attitude towards it fascinates me), ……… click below for more ↓

Is This Your Bar of Soap?

2015-12-15 2015-12-15 Culture / Humour & Satire / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture2 Comments

This is side five. Follow in your book and repeat after me as we learn three new words in Turkish: Towel. Bath. Border. So begins Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, from the first album released by the Firesign Theater, in 1968 (on later albums spelled as Theatre). Everything in it is a misdirection, a sidestep, a pun, an unexpected segue, a joke-within-a-joke, an opening to another place you hadn’t expected to be led to. May I see your passport please? Yes, I have it right here. (sounds of busy airport terminal in background) Uhum. Uhum. Uhum. Look at ……… click below for more ↓

The Secret to Good Writing

2015-12-13 2016-06-06 Grammar / Language & Grammar / My Writing / Style & usage / Writing & FictionLeave a comment

Spoiler alert: the secret to writing well is…. (insert drum roll)… writing. Writing a lot. Every day. Every possible minute you can spare. Writing and writing more and then writing even more. But doing so within a pre-specified limit. Oops… Now we all know that, aside from some local bloggers and EB columnists, most of us get better the more we practice a thing. Writing – aside from the aforementioned inept exceptions – included. It means not vegging in front of the TV all night, or trolling the Net for images of the Kardashian’s oversized ass, or scrolling through Facebook ……… click below for more ↓

Grammatical Hell in a Handbasket

2015-12-13 2015-12-13 Grammar / Language & Grammar / Style & usageLeave a comment

The Washington Post has started the apocalypse. Yes, they have. And the whole world is about to go to hell in the proverbial handbasket because of it. The maw of Hell has opened… The Post has decided after decades – centuries? – of editors, writers and grammarians arguing about the lack of gender-neutral singular pronouns in English, to accept “they” as the stand-in. Can you see the dominoes starting to topple? I shudder with that. It’s a diagnosis of grammatical ebola. There is no vaccine. The story popped up on Mental Floss today: Post copy editor Bill Walsh explains that he ……… click below for more ↓

Our ruined reputation

2015-12-11 2021-05-15 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

Collingwood’s reputation is in tatters. But you wouldn’t know that from the local media coverage. A story in the Stayner Sun this week illustrates just how bad it has become. It should have been front page in this week’s Connection: Clearview Township mayor chastises neighbouring Collingwood for airport decision In the story, Clearview’s mayor and deputy mayor rebuke Collingwood – our council and administrative staff – as being anti-business, anti-growth and simply being bad neighbours. Well-deserved criticisms if you’ve been following the airport debacle. Or the Block 9 debacle and its fallout. Or the anti-business-tax-hike-to-cover-council’s-pay-raise debacle. Or the anti-business assault on ……… click below for more ↓

Moved by myself…

2015-12-10 2021-05-15 Collingwood / Council / Language & Grammar / Style & usageLeave a comment

After watching Collingwood council meetings on Rogers again, I felt I should re-post a link to a piece I first wrote several years ago, then again in 2014, then re-wrote in April of this year: Me, myself and I Every time I watched the meetings, I also watched councillors say the same thing: “move by myself.” The incorrect use of the reflexive is like nails on a blackboard. We don’t expect all of our elected officials to be English majors, or great orators, but we do expect them to know – and speak – the basics. We expect them to speak better than some ……… click below for more ↓

Screw the Taxpayer

2015-12-09 2015-12-09 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costs3 Comments

Sitting down? Good. You might want a drink, too. A strong one. Ready? Get a grip on your chair. Here goes: Collingwood is looking at a 3.9% tax hike for 2016. And that’s just its own portion. Let me help you up. No, that isn’t wrong. It’s the proposed budget hike this council is contemplating. It was presented to council at an all-day meeting last week. The Connection reported on it, Dec. 2, in case you missed it (nothing in the EB, though).* That municipal tax raise will be coupled with an increase from the county, sending your taxes skyrocketing up ……… click below for more ↓

1914: My Grandfathers’ Year

2015-12-08 2015-12-08 Books & Reviews / Family history / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

As I read further into Max Hastings’ book, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, I wondered, as I have done in the past when reading similar books about that time, what my grandfathers must have felt when that war broke out. What it meant to them and their worldview, and to their imagined futures, both at the start of the war, and then at the end, after four years of struggle, of deprivation, of fighting. What was it like to finally come home? What did they think, then, of the world? Of their leaders? Of their own nationalism? Of the ……… click below for more ↓

In Search of Kant’s Categorical Imperative

2015-12-05 2015-12-09 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Ethics & morality / Logic and reason / PhilosophyOne Comment

I have not read Immanuel Kant. Until recently, I did not feel at all apologetic about that statement. But when I watched the video above, I realized how much I was missing. A remarkable thinker, he proves to be, whose thoughts about society, religion, behaviour and politics appear at first glance quite akin to my own cogitations. And in many ways, his conclusions – at least as stated in the video – seem very Buddhist in nature. That “categorical imperative” seems most intriguing, and familiar in many ways, and I want more explanation. The video, above, was posted on my ……… click below for more ↓