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.

A Treasure Trove

A recent trip to Toronto to see family and friends – and celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary – also netted me a treasure trove of books, thanks to the proximity of a new/used BMV bookstore to our hotel. And, of course, Susan’s patience while I browsed the shelves. Several times. I managed to find a dozen books (well, to be fair I found many more I wanted, but restrained myself to buying only a dozen). These included: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller (hardcover, Norton & Co., 2012). I actually started reading the ……… click below for more ↓

Abusing quotation marks

2014-09-09 2014-09-10 Humour & Satire / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Style & usageOne Comment

What goes through your mind when you see words in a paragraph or a sentence surrounded by quotation marks? Like that sign in the image on your left? That they are words excerpted from conversations or written content? Or that they are special; peculiar words, or perhaps used ironically, sarcastically or in jest? Take these examples from the “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotation Marks: “Chicken” pot pies $5.99 Please open the door “slowly” “Push” the last channel button. No “Free” refills It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What is in the pie that isn’t “chicken” but we’ll pretend it is? Try reading ……… click below for more ↓

Our gawker culture

2014-09-09 2014-09-09 Critical Thinking / Culture / Manners & Civility / Media Issues / Memes; Internet & Social / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Suddenly the Net lit up with headlines news: celebrity nude photos leaked! Videos too! Facebook timelines were replete with media stories. Shock. Horror. Voyeurism. Click, click, click the viewers racked up the view count as they raced to the sites just in case they actually showed something. A little flesh to feed our insatiable desire to gawk. Meanwhile psychopaths in ISIS continue to harvest human lives and slaughter journalists, Syria continues its brutal civil war, drought threatens the American southwest, climate change ravages the planet, Russia sends soldiers to undermine Ukraine and shoot down civilian airliners, pesticides continue to wipe out ……… click below for more ↓

Coffee with Cicero

2014-09-05 2014-09-07 Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Can you imagine what it would be like today to be able to meet the Roman philosopher, Cicero, for coffee and spend an hour chatting? Or meeting up at a local pub and settling down to a beer or glass of wine? How great would that be to spend an hour with one of the world’s great thinkers? What would you talk about? What wouldn’t you? Just imagine having the opportunity to share your thoughts on politics, religion, justice, philosophy, morals, friendship… the scope of what Cicero wrote about means you can talk about almost anything. Okay, maybe not our ……… click below for more ↓

Translating Montaigne

2014-09-03 2014-09-03 Books & Reviews / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now5 Comments

With two printed versions of Montaigne’s essays (translations by Donald Frame and M. A. Screech) and a couple of online editions available to me, I thought I might offer some examples of how individual translations have captured Montaigne’s writing and let you judge which you think is clearer and crisper for reading today. I chose, somewhat at random, some lines from Book 1, Essay 50: Of Democritus and Heraclitus. It’s a reasonably short piece. I will give it in its entirety once, then offer selected sentences as marked in bold, below, from other translations for comparison. (You can read some ……… click below for more ↓

Common Sense

2014-09-02 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. Thomas Paine, 18th century political activist and political philosopher, wrote that line. It struck me as particularly cogent in light of modern politics and the rise of fanatic, fundamentalist organizations: people who give themselves over to ideologies or to any monolithic cause lose their liberty because they stop thinking for themselves. They allow others to do the thinking for them, rather than question matters for themselves. This is true, of course, at all levels, local to international. We should never allow partisan politics to ……… click below for more ↓

Thirty years later…

2014-09-01 2021-05-15 Personal Reminiscences / PhilosophyLeave a comment

In his book of aphorisms, Human, All Too Human, Friedrich Nietzsche described “marriage as a long conversation” like this: When entering a marriage, one should ask the question: do you think you will be able to have good conversations with this woman right into old age? Everything else in marriage transitory, but most of the time in interaction is spent in conversation. In just under two weeks, I will celebrate my 30th wedding anniversary with Susan (and almost 33 years together). I can say with confidence that, yes, we still have engaging, stimulating, interesting conversations together. We always have, right ……… click below for more ↓

Sex, violence and TV shows

2014-08-31 2021-05-15 Culture / Media Issues / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

We just finished watching the third season of Game of Thrones on DVD this past weekend. Before that, we watched The White Queen, another DVD series (one season only, although it deserved more). As we watched both, I found myself wondering why directors and producers felt the need to insert gratuitous – but apparently obligatory – explicit scenes of sex and violence that really had little to do with either plot or character development. The same questions arose when I watched Deadwood, The Sopranos, First Blood and Boardwalk Empire. Personally, I found these explicit bits distracting, like commercials, because they ……… click below for more ↓

Green initiatives for next term

2014-08-31 2014-08-31 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Planning & Policies / PoliticsLeave a comment

Collingwood should be in the forefront for green initiatives in Ontario, not lagging behind. There’s no reason we should not be leaders in exploring new ways to reduce greenhouse gases, reduce our carbon footprint, promote sustainable and environmentally-friendly strategies, and reduce our energy costs. These will be some of my top goals for the 2014-18 council, if I’m re-elected. In the energy world, we have a great partner with Powerstream, which has already explored many of these areas and taken steps in other municipalities. We should embrace and encourage similar projects here, and use the experience and expertise Powerstream has ……… click below for more ↓

Taoist Lessons for Politicians

2014-08-31 2014-08-31 Books & Reviews / Faith / Municipal Politics / Politics / Translations & translatingLeave a comment

Those who look down upon this world, will surely take hold and try to change things. So begins verse 29 of the 4th century BCE Chinese classic (Jonathan Star translation*), the Tao Te Ching. That verse suggests that those who feel themselves superior to the world and to others, who feel their actions, thoughts, views and beliefs are above those of others, will attempt to impress their own rule on others. And, as the verse continues, they can only fail in their attempts to control things. Control slips from their fingers.** There’s a lesson here in verse 29, that winds throughout the book. It’s not simply for ……… click below for more ↓

Sonnet 103

2014-08-29 2021-05-15 Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, So begins Shakespeare’s sonnet number 103 (I started rereading the sonnets recently because, well because it’s Shakespeare, damn it all, and what other reason would anyone need?). It’s a sentiment I well know. The impoverished Muse thing, I mean. There are three dozen pieces in draft mode I’ve started here, then hesitated, and left incomplete. Unable to pull the threads together into a coherent tableaux because my muse is busy somewhere else. I have numerous unfinished stories, novels and even two books in progress on my hard drive. And a basement full of ……… click below for more ↓

Machiavelli and Xenophon

2014-08-29 2021-05-15 Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / Philosophy / PoliticsLeave a comment

Another piece posted on The Municipal Machiavelli this week; this time a short comment about Machiavelli and Xenophon, the ancient Greek writer who Niccolo referred to in The Prince and The Discourses: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/machiavelli-and-xenophon/ This recent post was sparked by a review of a new book on Xenophon aimed at the business-management reader: Larry Hedrick’s Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War. The review by Richard Feloni, on Business Insider, noted: Niccollò Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” a guide for the ideal ruler, made his name synonymous with a ruthless pragmatism based on the manipulation and total defeat of an ……… click below for more ↓

How to Run a Country

2014-08-28 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I’ve posted a review of Philip Freeman’s book, How to Run a Country on the Municipal Machiavelli site, here: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/how-to-run-a-country/ Freeman’s work is a short (132 pages in a small format) book with a mix of English and Latin content derived from the writing of Marcus Cicero, thematically chosen around the topics of governance, politics and war. It’s billed as a sequel to his “How to Win an Election”, but I didn’t feel it lived up to that title. However, I hope it can help introduce an audience of modern readers to the Roman writer Cicero and spark some interest ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s cat and Descartes’ reality

2014-08-27 2021-05-07 Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

“When I play with my cat,” wrote French philosopher and essayist, Michel de Montaigne, “Who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.*” That statement encompasses two very distinct paths of contemplation. First is one of animal sentience. The recognition that animals are conscious, that they are sentient creatures, with feelings and intelligence, not simply biological machines, is fairly new. Most of our modern awareness of animal intelligence and consciousness comes only in the last century (although the debate was opened in Darwin’s time). The 17th-century philosopher, Rene Descartes, believed animals were machines that ……… click below for more ↓