The Cancer Diaries, Part 24

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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My final week of radiation treatment is here. I should have felt elated that I would no longer be required to drive every day for an hour or more each way as I have for the past six weeks. Everyone told me it would go by in a flash, but it seems to have dragged on and on. I felt curiously empty when the new week dawned and the end was in sight. It’s been a difficult time — almost a year since my PSA test showed something was seriously wrong, and seven months since my surgery. While most of ……… click below for more ↓

Musings of a B-Film Junkie

Culture / Daily life / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture2 Comments

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I put a DVD of the 1939 film, The Gorilla, into the player and sat back to watch. Bela Lugosi (above, centre) starred beside the Ritz Brothers (trio above), a popular American comedy trio contemporary with the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, and the Marx Brothers. This would be the last year the Ritz Brothers worked for Fox; they stopped making films entirely in 1943. It’s the first full film of theirs I’ve seen, but am not impressed. Lugosi is best known for his starring role in the 1931 film, Dracula. After which he was typecast as the villain, mostly ……… click below for more ↓

Where is Collingwood’s Pandemic Response?

Collingwood / Council / COVID-19 responses / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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I admit I am stumped. I have been looking online to find something that tells me what Collingwood council has done in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year. I’m looking for real, concrete, measurable steps, things that benefit our community; things that residents and businesses can point to and say “This helped me survive.” I don’t want to read about promises, nor bloviations, nor self-serving proclamations with all the substance of a bad dream. We get enough vapid, banal content from our shambolic council already. Watching a council meeting is like being trapped in an elevator with ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 23

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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I started the New Year with another welcome three days off, with the final third of my radiation treatment ahead in the next few weeks. I can’t say I’ve ever been quite as happy to see a year pass as I have with 2020. As if the widening pandemic, lockdowns, Trump’s madness and treason, the nail-biting US elections, the stupid and selfishanti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, the QAnon idiocy spreading among the gullible, Brexit, Jason Kenney and the UCP destroying Canadian unity as well as Alberta, the waste of $9 million locally for the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), and Erin O’Toole’s ……… click below for more ↓

Point to Point: The Book From the Ground

Arts / Books & Reviews / Books about books / Culture / Language & Grammar / Meaning of words / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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A few years back, during one of our Toronto mini-vacations, I was browsing in the shop of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and I came across a small book that had no words, just pictures. No, it wasn’t a book with pictures of artworks or photographs: it was a story, told entirely through common icons, symbols, and emoticons. Pictograms, looking not unlike a modernized version of Egyptian hieroglyphs. There wasn’t even a book title on the cover. There were no instructions, no guides, no hints, no translations. The reader had to figure out what the story was about by him- ……… click below for more ↓

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Meaning of words / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy / Style & usage / TV / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymology4 Comments

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We recently watched the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, my third time seeing it, and I was struck again at how brilliant and quirky it was. Possibly the best of all the ST:NG’s 178 episodes. And, apparently, a lot of other fans agree with my assessment. Wikipedia describes it: The alien species introduced in this episode is noted for speaking in metaphors, such as “Temba, his arms wide”, which are indecipherable to the universal translator normally used in the television series to allow communication across different languages. Captain Picard is abducted by these aliens and marooned with ……… click below for more ↓

What would $9 Million Buy Our Town?

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

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Back a few years ago, the 2010-14 council led by Mayor Cooper approved building for the community several important structures and buying for public ownership several properties, any of which — indeed, several of which — could have been built for less than the $9 million cost we taxpayers are burdened with paying for the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) this term. For example, the new firehall we commissioned in 2012 cost $4.75 million. For roughly twice that amount, you know what you got from this council? Right: a report. And not just any report: we got a digital report, ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 22

Cancer / Daily life / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Three days off over Xmas from the daily drive felt like a longer holiday, although it wasn’t enough time for my bowels to heal properly. So far an irritable bowel, reduced urine stream, and my hot “flashes” (or surges) are the only side effects I’ve noticed. They are, however, enough to make me less than comfortable at times. I was warned I might feel fatigued, too; not just the normal state of being tired from too little sleep (what with pets and hot “flashes”), but deep fatigue. Not yet, but I still have three weeks of treatment to go, so ……… click below for more ↓

The $9 Million Dollar Mayor

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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More than eight million of your dollars have been spent to date on the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), and it may top $9 million if you add in the costs the town doesn’t include in its calculations, as well as the proposed $700,000 report-about-the-report. And that should stick to our $9 million-dollar mayor. There is a breakdown of the SVJI costs as of Dec. 18, 2020, on the town’s website. Sort of. The $8,098,547.40 total doesn’t include two key components: first, the salary and expenses of the inquiry’s judge. While that was paid for by the province, not simply ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 21

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Hot flashes are becoming more frequent, but I was warned they would be thus in the latter part of the treatment. I’m about halfway through the first stage of the hormone therapy process. My next hormone treatment (Lupron shot) will be given in about six weeks, shortly after my next blood test. I won’t know if I need more treatment (like chemotherapy or more hormones), however, for several more months after that. I’m not sure why they’re called hot “flashes” as if they were lightning — they’re more like swelling eruptions from within; at least for me they arrive not ……… click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration5 Comments

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I wonder how the people of Walkerton would feel about Collingwood CAO’s statement, reported in Collingwood Today, that implementing the 300-plus recommendations of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) is “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water.” I wonder how many people in our town will be saved from a painful, water-borne illness and possible death if, for example, the town encourages the province to implement recommendation number two: 2 Describing the mayor as both the head of Council and chief executive officer blurs the fact that the mayor is the head of Council and ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 20

Cancer / Daily life / Musings / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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A weekend off from the long, daily drive and the treatment certainly seems like a treat these days. On weekends, I get to have an easy morning, leisurely cups of tea, do some writing, play some computer games, take a long walk with Susan and Bella (weather permitting), then enjoy a quiet afternoon of reading, more tea, and maybe some online gaming with a friend. The prospect of spending another five or more weeks driving back and forth, suffering increasing side effects while missing my leisurely mornings, doesn’t thrill me. What choice do I have? That’s one of the things ……… click below for more ↓

The irony, the hypocrisy

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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There’s a letter on the council consent agenda that will either make you shake your head in wonder at the brash irony of it, or laughing at a writer who plays a fawning Rudy Giuliani to Saunderson’s Trump. It’s from Claire Tucker-Reid, the co-chair of the former Central Park Steering Committee (SPSC; our current mayor was the other), the committee that can be argued to be the cause of this recent and expensive turmoil that led to the town wasting more than $8 million of your money on a vindictive judicial inquiry (or, as some believe, a vendetta). The inquiry ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 19

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I was fortunate in being able to get my tooth fixed within 48 hours of losing a portion of it. I hadn’t expected to be able to see my dentist for at least a week, maybe even more, but there was an opening, a cancellation, and I grabbed it. I had a vision of having to spend a week or more eschewing tough or crunchy foods to avoid having another piece of enamel break away from around the old filling. No morning muesli, no peanuts or crunchy peanut butter, nothing too chewy or crusty like the sort of bread I ……… click below for more ↓

On growing old

Books & Reviews / Classical period / Classics / Critical Thinking / Musings / Philosophy / Stoicism & classical philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“We truly can’t praise the love and pursuit of wisdom enough,” wrote Marcus Tullius Cicero in one of his last works, How to Grow Old (De Senectute; aka On Aging or On Old Age), “since it allows a person to enjoy every stage of life free from worry.” “Ancient wisdom for the second half of life,” is how Philip Freeman subtitles his translation of Cicero’s little book in his 2016 Princeton University edition. Cicero wrote his essay (not really a book as we think of them today) in 44 BCE, when he was already 62 years old. I’ve been reading ……… click below for more ↓

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