Selling the electric upright bass

Arts / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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My first experience playing a bass guitar came when I was asked to join a local garage band in the mid-1960s. I was learning rhythm guitar back then, inspired by the Beatles and the wave of British pop bands that flooded the airwaves from around 1962. But they already had two of those. They didn’t have a bass player, though, so I became the bass player. Not a terribly good one, mind you, but it was a fun experience. As soon as I left, a year or two later, I went back to rhythm guitar. But bass stuck with me ……… click below for more ↓

Council’s second strategic planning session

Collingwood / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

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Although there were no media reporters present to cover it, Collingwood Council held its second strategic planning session this term, on December 4. This was an important, all-day session for council because it set priorities for 2014, the last year this term. We also collectively agreed upon a list of our many accomplishments this term. Based on the goals set in our first strategic planning session, we have accomplished almost everything we set out to do back then, as well as many other things that arose since that session. The meeting was a formal council meeting and open to the ……… click below for more ↓

Canada Post writes its own obituary

Canadian Politics / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Headline news this week: Canada Post moves to end home delivery. End home delivery? For me, both as  a writer, a lay historian, and growing up in an era where letters were important for communication, business, family and for art, that’s just crazy. I mean really, seriously, way-more-insane-than-the-OLG crazy. But, in an age of declining letter writing – where the tyranny of the Twitterverse is reducing our literary skills to hashtags and cryptic abbreviations- it may be inevitable.* Charlie Gillis wrote in MacLean’s wrote about the accelerating slide to digital communication back in  March, outlining both the challenges the postal service ……… click below for more ↓

Art, Science & Baking

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

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You gotta love breadmaking. It’s an opportunity to get the right and left hemispheres of the brain working together, not racing about in different directions like they do most times. The logical and the creative sides working in lockstep. Bread making combines the logic of science with the freedom of expression in art. Well, that’s really true of all cooking, but it seems more evident in baking. You get your hands into the mix, with bread. It’s a visceral thing to do. Like pottery. Breadmaking combines four sciences, too: physics, chemistry, biology and botany. They all come into play when ……… click below for more ↓

Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

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What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these  constructions that convince some folks they’re made by – or for – aliens? Or that there’s some bizarre coverup by governments to keep people from knowing the “truth” about them? This week I noticed some odd search terms showing up in my stats page: “antarctica”  and “pyramids” in the same line. ……… click below for more ↓

Ah, Hubris…

Bread & Baking / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Annabeth: My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris. Percy: The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches? Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. That’s HUMMUS. Hubris is worse. Percy: What could be worse than hummus? Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else… Even the gods. Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters You think you know it all, and so you try to show off your talents. That’s when hubris makes you fall. So today, with company for the weekend, in between chess games, ukulele songs and great conversation, ……… click below for more ↓

The Weird World of Plotto

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now11 Comments

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I came across Plotto a few years back – references to it in other works, rather than the actual book. it sounded strange, complex and wildly over-reaching. I couldn’t find one – it was long out of print. It wasn’t until I got my own copy that I realized how really odd, clumsy – and delightful – it is. Plotto was first published in 1928, and not reprinted until recently as far as I can tell, which is why it’s not been readily available to read and comment on. But it has been lurking in the background, a collector’s item. ……… click below for more ↓

Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013.   I use social media regularly and frequently. As a politician, that makes me either very brave or very stupid. But I’ve been doing this for the last 30 years, long before I ever got elected. Social media isn’t new to me.* It may be slicker than it was in 1983, but it’s essentially the same text-based, monologue, just with chrome added. In fact, the tone of the conversation seems to have gone downhill since the 80s. Back then ……… click below for more ↓

What am I doing wrong?

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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I began a levain last week (Nov 19) and it seemed to go well at first, but then it just seemed to have stopped… or slowed to a crawl. Was is dead? Or just dormant? Did I have a welcome guest growing in the bowl or was it a wet mass of unwanted invaders? Am I too anxious and not patient enough? Sourdough bread has been called the “Everest” of breads, which I realize refers not to its towering presence but because it’s so damned hard to conquer. Getting it started seems a combination of art, science, animal husbandry and ……… click below for more ↓

Doing it by the numbers

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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The first thing I learned – well, not the first but up there, for sure – is that volume measurements are for amateurs. Being an amateur (and expecting to be there for some time yet), I took it on the chin when asking typical neophyte questions about recipes and ingredients. Might as well have hung a sign around my posts shouting “newbie!” Well, they were gentle with me, but strict. Tough love among bakers. Good bakers use weights, not volume, they told me in no uncertain terms. No more cups of flour: grams of flour, instead. Good thing I bought ……… click below for more ↓

Road Trip to K2

Bread & Baking / Food & DrinkLeave a comment

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No, not to the mountain. To the mill. The flour mill in Beeton, a little more than an hour’s drive southeast of me. We took a little road trip today in my never-ending quest for baking ingredients. Susan came along, showing remarkable tolerance for my obsession. K2 is a modest, old-fashioned place that grinds flour – the only mill still operating in the county, as far as I have been able to tell. And one of the rare artisanal mills at all in Ontario. And of course it sells its products, as well as some other items like maple syrup, ……… click below for more ↓

We have heading up for your net

Blog & Blogging / Internet & Social Media / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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I have to admit that I frequently read the spam comments WordPress traps for my moderation, and I often do so with a smile. The clumsy, crazy constructs, the awkward English, butchered punctuation and the twisted word use just make me laugh. Yes, like everyone else, I detest spam, and I quickly delete the comments into whatever digital wastebin they descend to. But I often chuckle to read them first. They make me wonder: are they deliberately written poorly, are they the sincere efforts of someone struggling to learn English, words strung together in random order by a bot, or ……… click below for more ↓

These Poolish Things…

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Language & Grammar / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Poolish. Levain. Banneton. Autolyse. Retardation. Lactobaccilli. Bassinage. Windowpane test. Crumb. Batard. Barm. A new vocabulary is building in me, one that brings the lore of breadmaking, the etymology of the loaf to my conversation.* It’s a necessary vocabulary, if one wants to fully understand the techniques and technology of baking bread. Knowing the names of things gives one power. It’s also a bit like being welcomed into a secret society where members whisper to one another in their codified language. Is there a secret handshake? It also helps broach that disconnect between our modern selves and what we eat. Knowing the process, ……… click below for more ↓

Coriolanus on Film

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

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Coriolanus is a tough play, full of politics and angry people and shouting mobs. It has no comic relief, no jesters, no romance and no real heroes. No great soliloquies, unsympathetic characters, uncomfortable double dealing, treachery and plotting. No powerful subplot as a counterpoint. Pride, arrogance, and power dominate. Coriolanus himself is empty, driven, bereft of the great passions that animate Shakespeare’s other main protagonists. Except the passion for revenge, which comes upon him halfway through the play. Before that, he seems an automaton, as fixed in his role as an aristocrat and soldier as Tsar Nicholas was, with little ……… click below for more ↓

Gluten, Sourdough, Fads and Ailments

Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & DrinkOne Comment

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Gluten, that everyday protein found in many grains, has become the health-fad followers’ most recent evil spectre, and many (one in three, stats show) have jumped onto the anti-gluten bandwagon, generally with a simplistic message: “gluten bad.” Like most diet fads, I expect it will likely fall off centre stage when the next Big Thing To Rise Against comes along. But meanwhile, until the next fad raises its head, gluten gets sensationalized, demonized and generally misunderstood. Headlines like this abound (it was matched by a CBC Radio story on Ontario Morning Tuesday, Nov. 12): Sourdough breadmaking cuts gluten content in ……… click below for more ↓

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