Musical Sources

Culture / Music & Reviews / Musical Instruments / Ukulele: instruments & musicLeave a comment

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Trying learn a song from an old songbook or sheet music can be difficult unless you already know how the song goes. Many of our group are introduced to the music in our songbook only through my version when I play in at our meetings. And, I admit, my version may not always reflect the original accurately. It’s good to be able to hear the song so you can  appreciate how it is arranged and where the chord changes will be. Here are a few of the online resources I recommend, you can go to where music from the 1920s and 30s ……… click below for more ↓

Defining Classical Music

Culture / Language & Grammar / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk] I listen to classical music a lot, even more than before since the arrival of the new classical FM station in Collingwood. But while my listening at home is through a selected collection of CDs, the content played on radio – internet radio included – is more eclectic. Airplay often includes soundtracks, music from musicals, even some modern pieces (the other day I heard a well-known tenor singing a somewhat romanticized version of Besame Mucho in Spanish, with orchestral backup). While I don’t object to this mix – in fact I enjoy it most of the time – it did ……… click below for more ↓

Another TEOTWAWKI

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Christianity / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Faith2 Comments

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TEOTWAWKI – The End Of The World As We Know It – has been predicted ever since humans looked up in wonder at the sky and decided it was peopled with invisible beings. Beings who wanted to do us harm, it seems. And as quickly as we people the sky, there developed an industry predicting when they would harm us, which soon led to the invention of the cash register. Wikipedia has a long list of dates predicted for the end of the world over the last two millennia. So far, every prophecy has been wrong. But because we’re here ……… click below for more ↓

Rest In Peace, Mary Chadwick

History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Mary Mabel Bernice Chadwick passed away quietly in the morning of April 13, 2015 in her room in the Tony Stacey Veterans’ Care Centre. She had awakened that morning, and spoke briefly to staff, but nodded off shortly after. She never awoke. She was 95 years old and lived a full, rich life, one of remarkable resilience and strength. Mary was born shortly after WWI, and grew up in Canada during the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and the years of recovery that followed. But then war came back. She was a young woman when WWII broke out. She soon followed the ……… click below for more ↓

Lovecraft’s Tales of Terror

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Scifi and fantasy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. Ex Oblivione, 1921. Along with Edgar Rice Burroughs, my teenage reading covered a lot of genres, but I gravitated to scifi and fantasy. Fantasy in those days didn’t offer the same overflowing bookshelves of cookie-cutter tales we find in today’s bookstores. But they took me out of the miseries and difficulties of my little world so easily that I made the effort to find them. Back then, fantasy was an addendum to the scifi section. You often had to hunt for the rare titles in stores and libraries where ……… click below for more ↓

Master Shih Te’s Words

Buddhism / Poetry & Lyrics / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I see a lot of silly folks who claim their own small spine’s Sumeru, the sacred mountain that supports the universe. Piss ants, gnawing away at a noble tree, with never a doubt about their strength. They chew up a couple of Sutras, and pass themselves off as Masters. Let them hurry and repent. From now on no more foolishness. This is poem XI* from Master Shih Te, a hermit on Cold Mountain; contemporary of and close friend to the Tang dynasty poet, Han Shan. This verse is translated by J. P. Seaton from his book, Cold Mountain Poems (Shambhala, Boston, ……… click below for more ↓

Spring Breads

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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It’s been a while since I wrote about baking bread. During the election campaign last fall, my baking was sidetracked somewhat, but I did manage to get a few loaves in. Last month I got back to baking in earnest. However, along the way, I ignored my levain and it went off. I had to toss it, and have not yet started a new one. The loaf on the right is the last one I made with my levain. It was good and crusty, with a great acidic taste, so I need to restore a levain to get that flavour ……… click below for more ↓

Cold Camembert, Collingwood Style

Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal Politics / Politics5 Comments

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Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth made comments last week about how awful it is to eat normal airplane food as an excuse why she billed more sumptuous meals to her taxpayer-funded expense account. Cold camembert and broken crackers, she whined, were not acceptable breakfast fare for the likes of a Senator. As the NatPost quoted her: “There are a couple of times when my assistant put in for a breakfast when I was on a plane, and they say I should have not claimed because I should have eaten that breakfast… Those breakfasts are pretty awful. If you want ice-cold Camembert with broken crackers, ……… click below for more ↓

Ontario’s Assault on Health Care

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Provincial Politics / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

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Earlier this month, the Ontario government took a shot at real medicine when it became the first province in Canada to regulate homeopathy. What the government should have done, if it had any real concern about our collective health or our health care system, is ban it. Instead, although it at first seemed an April Fool’s joke, on April 1 the Wynne government announced legislation that will do nothing but legitimize and help spread this dangerous pseudoscience. Clearly this was a political move,  since it is not motivated by scientific, medical or health-related concerns (nor, apparently information informed by actual science or ……… click below for more ↓

ERB and Barsoom

Personal Reminiscences / Scifi and fantasy / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

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Tara of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which she had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. Her carriage was that of health and physical perfection—the effortless harmony of faultless coordination. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about her body; her black hair was piled high upon her head. With a wooden stick she tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the summons was answered by a ……… click below for more ↓

Gated Communities

Collingwood / Council / Development & GrowthLeave a comment

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I’m not a big fan of gated communities, but even if I don’t personally want to live in one myself, I understand the reason for them, and sympathize with homeowners in those zones. Apartments are basically gated towers that restrict access to residents or keyholders and no one complains that they isolate the residents. Few people who live in one would welcome strangers walking up and down their halls. If a home owner in other parts of town has the right to fence in his or her property and keep people out or otherwise restrict access, then why shouldn’t a part ……… click below for more ↓

Pompeii: Swords-and-Sandals Flop

Film & Reviews / History & Biography / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

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As a film setting, the town of Pompeii in the first century CE is a lot like the deck of the Titanic in 1912: no amount of special effects or clever script writing is going to save it from the disaster awaiting. As a film, Pompeii has a lot of the former, but precious little of the latter to rescue it. That’s probably why it’s in the $7 section at the DVD store. Let’s start with the history. Pompeii was a Roman town on the west side of Italy close to the slopes of an active volcano, Mount Vesuvius. The recipe ……… click below for more ↓

Revelations about Revelation

Books & Reviews / Christianity / Faith / Religion / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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It’s got treachery, betrayal, politics, violence, skullduggery, sex, war, philosophy, politics, religion, an empire teetering on the brink of collapse, mystical visions, rebellion, emperors and slaves, angry priests accusing other priests, unrepentant martyrs going to their deaths in the arena, and the end of the world looming over it all. What more could you want? It’s all in Elaine Pagels’ book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy & Politics in the Book of Revelation. Reading it has been quite an entertaining experience, as she takes you through the turbulent early church history, through the philosophical and scriptural precedents, the fight to establish orthodoxy and the ……… click below for more ↓

Thurber’s Writings & Drawings

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading Now / Writing & Fiction2 Comments

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Books of James Thurber‘s cartoons and writing were always on the shelves at my grandparents’ home, as well as on my parents’ bookshelves. I read them, as I did everything else on those shelves, when I was quite young. I still remember his odd, eccentric cartoons with their primitive lines but sharp and bizarre wit, although I can’t recall much if any what stories I read of his back then (and I am looking forward to reading today what I haven’t read since I was in my early teens). Yet despite my fuzzy memory for literature of my past, I still recall the enjoyment ……… click below for more ↓

Abdicating Responsibility

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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Collingwood Council has, in its short time in office, abdicated much of its responsibility to the business of government and to the people of this town. Council has sloughed off the duties they were elected to shoulder with remarkable alacrity. Some of that responsibility landed on staff, who assumed control of the budget process and drive most of the initiatives that come to the table. But some of it is being passed along to un-elected residents. It began early on when this council decided not to put a council representative on the BIA Board of Management. This way, no one can ……… click below for more ↓

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