Personal Reminiscences – Page 26

Hell 2.3

Before I carry on with my exploration of Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell, I wanted to note that I just got my copy of her other book – the Encyclopedia of Heaven, from Abebooks. It’s dated 1999, so it’s a year later than her book on Hell. Yet it has many related topics – like Goethe’s second Faust. And it has lots of pop culture – like movie references – but nothing post 1999. Miriam, why not consider a revised, updated “Encyclopedia of the Afterlife” to combine everything in one book? Lots has happened since the last editions. I’d ……… click below for more ↓

The Terrier Trials

2013-07-29 2013-07-29 Personal Reminiscences / Pets & Animal Behaviour3 Comments

Dogs. I love dogs. I’d have a dozen of them, if I could. But dogs are as different in personality as we are. Not all dogs are a good fit with other dogs, or even with people. Or with cats. And I love cats as much, if not more, than dogs. Still, I tend to have more issues with dog owners than with their dogs.* That little mutt curled up on my leg is Bella, our newest rescue dog. She’s a 2-year-old Jack Russell-Chihuahua mix, which apparently is a recognized mix according to this dog breed site. Given the range of ……… click below for more ↓

Hell 2.2

2013-07-29 2013-07-29 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Faith / Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Might be time to recap my reasons for writing this series. New readers could get confused about the content in the Hell posts, of which this is the fourth. They’re all the result of a convergence of several recent themes and activities in my life; a lot of which have to do with recent reading and research. I started reading several books, more or less simultaneously this summer, some of which I’ve blogged about. One of them is Dante’s Inferno (I’m currently reading Mark Musa’s translation in the Penguin edition, but also have Pinsky’s and a few others). Another is ……… click below for more ↓

Hell 2.1, a small update

2013-07-27 2013-07-27 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Personal Reminiscences / ReligionLeave a comment

I left you in my exploration of the Encyclopedia of Hell pondering which version of the Faustus story was better: with or without his final redemption. Personally, I prefer without, because it offers greater dramatic opportunities. I also don’t like the notion of redemption: it seems like a “get out of Hell free” card. Christianity is the only religion I know of that offers this particular way out of your bad deeds: accept Jesus as your personal saviour and you’ll get diverted from Hell. So basically you can be evil until your deathbed, not take responsibility for your actions, then ……… click below for more ↓

Hell 2.0

2013-07-22 2013-07-22 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Religion / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I left you last time after finishing the letter D, in Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell. I’m back in book form to take you through a few more entries in her exploration of the afterlife. But first a couple of additions to your reading material. First on the list is Alice Turner’s 275-page The History of Hell. It’s an illustrated guide to how Westerners have come to think of Hell, It starts with the ancient influences – Egypt, Greece, Rome and Judaism – but its main focus is on the evolving Christian imagination. She has a lot to say ……… click below for more ↓

Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!

2013-07-21 2013-07-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / My WritingLeave a comment

A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I thought it was a joke, a spoof. After all, how can one realistically get rid of perhaps the most significant element of punctuation based on the rantings of a website lunatic? And some of the counterpoint sites like Humbleapostrophe seemed created in a sense of camaraderie humour. But no, on further reading, it’s as real as any of the other wingnut sites, from chemtrails to “psychic” readings to UFOs. Most ……… click below for more ↓

What in Hell…?

2013-07-19 2013-09-16 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Humour & Satire / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Hades, you know, isn’t a place. It’s a guy. The Greek god of the underworld. His territory consists of a bunch of domains, including the rather unpleasant Tartarus, where souls – called shades – suffer eternal punishment. Hades wasn’t a fun god. If you weren’t getting your skin ripped off in Tartarus, life sucked in other ways. You moped about in the other domains, lethargically meandering around the afterlife without much purpose. Sort of like former politicians or local bloggers. That’s the sort of thing you learn when you read books. And the sort of thing that gets me labelled ……… click below for more ↓

The Enemies List

2013-07-19 2013-07-19 Collingwood / Humour & Satire / Municipal Politics2 Comments

Canadians barely lifted an eyebrow in surprise when it was revealed that our Prime Minister had an “enemies list” compiled as a warning to newly-minted cabinet ministers laying out who they can’t trust. I mean, we’ve lived with Harper as leader long enough not be shocked by anything that seems petty, autocratic, paranoid or Republican. So what if the list was so long it had to be delivered in several boxes and had more names than the GTA white pages? The Toronto Star editorialized about how the “PMO’s derisive and adversarial tone is rightly ringing alarm bells.” Clearly they haven’t ……… click below for more ↓

The sum of all knowledge

2013-07-16 2013-07-16 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Literary pretensions / Psychology & Sociology / Uncategorized / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

In his 2004 book, The Know-It-All, A. J. Jacobs tells of his quest to become “the smartest person in the world” by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover. Right away, you can see the fly in this intellectual ointment: knowledge doesn’t equal intelligence. Jared Diamond, in his introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel, credits the barely literate, ill-educated tribespeople of New Guinea as being the smartest people he ever met. Not because of their ability to discourse, as Jacobs says, on the intricacies of the Phoenician legal system, but rather because their daily life is such a struggle. ……… click below for more ↓

Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it

2013-07-16 2013-07-16 Games & Gaming / History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods & Kings, released in 2012. BNW was released last Tuesday, and I was at the local EB Games store to get one on launch day. Over the weekend, I took a look at it, playing for several hours in learning mode. Civilization, if you don’t already know, is a turn-based 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) computer game/simulation created by Sid Meier, originally in 1991. It has gone through numerous releases ……… click below for more ↓

Putdownable books?

2013-07-13 2013-07-13 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

A recent article in The Independent said that J.K. Rowling’s new book and the abysmally-written 50 Shades of Grey were among the books most put down by readers as unfinishable. Putdownable. A description no author or publisher relishes. They joined titles like Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Ulysses, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, Atlas Shrugged and Catch 22 as books readers gave up the struggle to finish. Personally, I hesitate to put 50 Shades in the same category as anything even vaguely literary, let alone the likes of Joseph Heller and J.R. Tolkein. But we’re talking statistics here, not ……… click below for more ↓

Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

2013-07-12 2015-08-11 Arts / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My WritingOne Comment

After reading the play by Shakespeare last week, I decided to tackle Chaucer’s epic 8,000-line poem about the Trojan lovers, Troilus and Cressida (or Criseyde as Chaucer writes it). It’s a long, somewhat meandering piece that begins, in the Online Medieval Classical Library version: The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the king Priamus sone of Troye, In lovinge, how his aventures fellen Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye, My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye. Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryte! To thee clepe I, ……… click below for more ↓

A Sneak Peak Inside Our New Fire Hall

2013-07-09 2013-07-09 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PhotographyLeave a comment

Councillor Lloyd and I took a tour through the new fire hall, at the corner of High and Third Streets, today. It’s still under construction, but the main components are finished and the firefighters have moved in. It’s an impressive place. Well-designed, well-built (using a lot of local builders and materials!). Make sure you attend the open house when the building is officially completed, this fall. We should all be proud of this place: it sets standards not only for this town, but for other fire services across the province. Here are some images to whet your appetite for visit. ……… click below for more ↓

Centennial Pool Gets Finishing Touches

2013-07-09 2013-07-09 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PhotographyLeave a comment

A sneak peak into Centennial Pool a few weeks before it re-opens. Councillor Lloyd and I took a look around today (July 9) at how it’s progressing. We were very impressed. It’s going to be fabulous! Collingwood residents will love this place. It is really a stunning facility and we will be proud to host events here. The first image, at the top, shows the therapeutic pool at the bottom, with the ramp for accessibility, then the pool and the new electronic scoreboard. Feels like a cathedral inside, it’s so large! And light galore: bright and open. Warm, welcoming place. ……… click below for more ↓