Lichens of South Georgian Bay

Botany & Paleobotany / Collingwood / Environment / Personal Reminiscences / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”19″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] In recent months, I have developed an interest in lichens: wondering what species live in our area, how and where they grow, which plants are their competitors or companions, why they grow where they do, what they live on for nutrition, how they reproduce and spread, what lives on them, and their microbiology. Small, innocuous plants you may mistake for a discoloration on rock or even a disease on a tree, they are nonetheless very common throughout our local environment. In fact, lichen have been found on every continent, including Antarctica, which has earned some ……… click below for more ↓

Council Just Waves Its Hands

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry5 Comments

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Council waving its hands. Making ineffective flapping gestures. It sounds like it should be some sort of metaphorical phrase. Something from the Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra episode of Star Trek. But hand-waving is actually a metaphorical term that means failure to deliver the goods. And also trying to deflect attention from your failure. Wikipedia describes it as, … a pejorative label for attempting to be seen as effective — in word, reasoning, or deed — while actually doing nothing effective or substantial. Oh, boy, does that ever describe to a “T” our council with its collective, increasingly desperate, yet ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on My Father

Cancer / Family history / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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That rather handsome, 17-year-old young man to the left was Watts William Chadwick. My father, although he wouldn’t become that for many more years. So serious, so formal looking. A lot more so than I was at his age (I can’t say for sure that I even owned a tie or sports jacket at 17!).  I was remembering my father of late as I go through my belongings for downsizing. I’ve been putting aside to keep anything that might continue to connect me to my family. There’s not a lot of it. And I was also thinking about the recent ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Downsizing, No. 2

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, there’s a memorable, somewhat spooky scene towards the end where astronaut Dave is pulling the chips from the memory banks of HAL, the ship’s AI computer. HAL begs Dave to stop while his memories recede: Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave…Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid… I felt a bit like HAL while I ……… click below for more ↓

Quidnuncs on Council

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications4 Comments

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A quidnunc is “a small-minded person, focused on petty things.” That’s how Gord Hume describes them in chapter five of his book, Taking Back Our Cities (Municipal World, 2011). Hume adds, “We have far too many of them on municipal councils across Canada.” I wonder what he’d say if he learned we had nine of them on ours? Hume continues: It’s the councillor who pops up with odd little motions, or quibbling about a word in a motion, or can’t keep up with the agenda, or has trouble contributing to the debate, or focuses more on the process than the ……… click below for more ↓

Bones of Contention: Saunderson’s Campaign Emails

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Saunderson's MPP campaignOne Comment

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In his latest email to potential supporters (dated Mar. 18 at 10:12 a.m.), Mayor Brian Saunderson again tries to leverage his role as mayor and Simcoe County councillor to get enough votes that will allow him to leave those roles he had committed in his oaths of office to perform “truly, faithfully and impartially exercise this office to the best of my knowledge and ability.” Yeah, right. But even though he seemingly can’t wait to be free of those responsibilities, he still boasts about his positions as he trawls for supporters: As the Mayor of the Town of Collingwood, I ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s Version of QAnon: the SVJI

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's MPP campaign / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry2 Comments

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A story in CollingwoodToday titled, Council orders CAO to sift through old COLLUS documents kept by EPCOR shows just how far into the conspiracy pit they have dug themselves. They are so totally obsessed with the events of a  decade ago, that they happily continue to waste administrative staff time and more of our tax dollars digging through the old records of emails that were already subpoenaed and sorted through by the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) two years ago.  According to Mayor Brian Saunderson, the records could include financial statements and old emails from when the COLLUS ……… click below for more ↓

Why Won’t Council Answer Megarry?

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry8 Comments

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Collingwood resident John Megarry is asking of council the tough questions our lackadaisical local media should be asking. But he’s not getting any replies. In fact, he’s being stonewalled. (You can see the video of the latest council meeting here, with Megarry’s deputation starting at 0:15:22).* To date, Megarry has made two deputations to council about the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI), but we hope he makes more. He wants to know how it happened, who had secret meetings about it, why the public wasn’t consulted, and why the public was told by council and staff it would ……… click below for more ↓

Floccinaucinihilipilification in Collingwood

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry3 Comments

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Floccinaucinihilipilification*, the longest non-technical word in the English language, is when you consider something to be unimportant, worthless, useless, or generally valueless. Basically, it means it’s rubbish. As Robert Heinlein wrote in a 1951 scifi novel: Digby was a floccinaucinihilipilificator at heart—which is an eight-dollar word meaning a joker who does not believe in anything he can’t bite. Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951). I was thinking of that word as perhaps the most wittily appropriate to describe the report from the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI), the promotion of which our council and staff happily continue to lavish ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Downsizing, No. 1

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Musings / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Downsizing seems to be all the rage among people our age. It’s so popular, it might be classified as a sport or a game for seniors. Assuming someone could codify the rules, that is. I’ve been told it’s all over the TV, too, but since we haven’t had cable for a decade or more, I am only going on hearsay for that. But the topic shows up now and then on the front cover of grocery-store checkout magazines, (along with headlines about glitterati of whom I’ve never heard), so perhaps it is a popular activity outside our age group, too. ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Pizza No. 2

Cooking / Daily life / Eating / Food & Drink / PizzaLeave a comment

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Pizza was one of those things I thought about when my hot flashes from my ongoing hormone treatment awoke me in the middle of the night this past week. Several times, in fact. As I tossed and turned I thought about my pizza-making process as I recently described here and wondered. I had received some comments about it, too, which prompted my continued meditations on pizza. I’ve been making pizza that way for years with only minor changes or alterations in the steps, but I first asked myself, “Can I simplify it?” Then came other questions: Can I change the ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson Still Won’t Do the Right Thing

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Saunderson's MPP campaignLeave a comment

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Mayor Brian Saunderson swore an oath at the council inauguration in 2018 that included the promise to “truly, faithfully and impartially exercise this office to the best of my knowledge and ability.” And yet barely halfway through his term, he announced he wanted to get out of that commitment and leave town for a better-paying job as an MPP in Toronto. What sort of “best” is that for Collingwood?* When someone is actively campaigning to get out of one job and into another, I doubt anyone else would consider they can or will do their current job to the “best ……… click below for more ↓

Finding a Breakfast Cereal With No Added Sugar

Eating / Food & Drink / Health & Medicine4 Comments

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Why is it so difficult to find a breakfast cereal without added sugar? Even your basic, unadorned bran flakes have added sugar in them! And not just a small amount. While I’m sure there are commercial brands of cereal without sugar or some alternative sweetener, I’m struggling to find many (if any) on local grocery store shelves. I’m not against sugar per se. It belongs in desserts and candy. I like some ice cream or frozen yogurt for dessert at times. And I sometimes enjoy a few slices of candied ginger after dinner. I even enjoy ginger marmalade on toast ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Making Pizza

Alcohol / Cooking / Eating / Food & Drink / Pizza2 Comments

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I have to admit that I like pizza a lot. Well, I guess most of us do. I like cheese, and I liked cooked cheese even more, and I like vegetables, so pizza is up there as a mealtime favourite. We don’t eat it frequently, perhaps once month or less often. These days I make it myself: we don’t order it from a restaurant or pizzeria, although we’ve had it from them when we went out for dinner (back in the pre-pandemic days). Nothing against anyone else’s pizza, but I like the process of making it, so I seldom buy ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 26

Cancer / Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / TVLeave a comment

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Cancer changes everything — and nothing at all. Rabbi Skillman That’s a profound comment, coming from a TV character. The “rabbi” in question is a fictional patient in hospital, played by George Wyner in the TV series, New Amsterdam (Season 1 Episode 8). He is talking to the hospital’s medical director, Dr. Max Goodwin (played by Ryan Eggold).  Cancer — its diagnosis, treatment, and impact on people — plays a pivotal role in the series, and offers some food for thought for viewers. This episode stayed with me for quite some time. Skillman suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer. It’s a ……… click below for more ↓

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