Centennial Pool Gets Finishing Touches

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PhotographyLeave a comment

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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 ↓

Troilus and Cressida

Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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I’ve always found Troilus and Cressida a difficult play. The characters all seem jaded, cynical, opportunistic, stuffily sanctimonious, lecherous or simply underhanded. Some are merely unpleasant, others are despicable, reprehensible. All seem self-serving, more concerned with their own gains and goals than that of the greater war around them. It’s difficult to understand why it was listed as a “comedy” (although oddly placed in the folio, between the histories and tragedies). Even Harold Bloom calls it “difficult” and “elitist” (although he later qualifies it as Shakespeare’s “most sophisticated” and “intellectualized” play). And Joyce Carol Oates called it, “…that most vexing ……… click below for more ↓

Racism and the US Civil Rights movement retold

Conspiracy Theories / Media Issues / Personal Reminiscences / US Politics3 Comments

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As I read through Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland, about American politics and life in the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement and the reaction to it by white Americans, the narrative astounds me. Such anger, such violence. Such sadness. It seems like such an alien place, dystopian, almost fictional, like an Orwellian novel. I was, it seems from my reading, not really aware, not fully cognizant of just how bad it was. But then, it looks eerily familiar – some of the photos look just like those taken during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Am I merely juxtaposing my ……… click below for more ↓

Why are Pickup Trucks so Anti-Pedestrian?

Environment / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / Urban Design & Growth / US Politics2 Comments

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Take a look at the back of any of today’s pickup trucks. Notice the exhaust pipe, under the vehicle? It points to the right. The same side of the road that pedestrians and cyclists use.* Notice the bike lane in the photo – that’s where cyclists will be when this truck passes by them. No place to move to avoid the fumes. Yet I have seen vintage trucks with that design, as in the photo to the right (even here in town). Several, in fact in just the past week. I don’t know the date of the change from rear to ……… click below for more ↓

Reading, Writing and Memory

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / My Writing / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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“Memory,” he read the headline as he settled into the armchair, resting his elbows on the wide arms to expand the National Post paper to its fullest, “declines much slower in people who read, write throughout life.” Ah. Interesting. He peered closer. “Reading books, writing letters and working on crossword puzzles throughout life may help preserve the brain’s memory faculties and fend off Alzheimer’s disease and early-onset dementia, according to a recent U.S. study published in the the journal Neurology.” Hmmm. Well, of course. We knew that, he chuffed to himself. Coming from a family of avid readers who lived ……… click below for more ↓

The CAO Conspiracies

Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Humour & Satire / Municipal PoliticsOne Comment

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Collingwood has appointed an interim CAO, John Brown, former city manager of Brantford, St. John’s and Oshawa, to help the town’s administration and governance during the interim while we search for a full-time CAO. This will, of course, send the bloggers into a frothing tizzy of frenetic accusations and conspiracy theories. So to save them the effort of having to explain this, I have written some plausible conspiracy theories for them to consider for their own use: 1. It’s actually Paul Bonwick, cleverly disguised by cosmetic surgery to look shorter, older and bald. Paul was last seen boarding a plane to the ……… click below for more ↓

The Decline in Media Credibility and Profitability

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / My Writing / Social Order & Disorder6 Comments

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Last August the Pew research Center released the results of its latest study on how much the American public trusts the media. This has been part of an ongoing study since at least 2002, and ever since the first report, the amount of trust in media has fallen. This has been a hot topic of discussion online ever since, and the source of much hand-wringing at each new release. Perhaps the mounting number of scandals in journalism has soured an audience accustomed to believing the media is honorable, trustworthy and upright. Perhaps it’s the growing politicization of (some) media that ……… click below for more ↓

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Critical Thinking / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I was thinking of the lines from that Fairport Convention song this week as we walked through Toronto on our three-day mini-holiday. I can still hear Sandy Denny’s wonderful, haunting voice singing the chorus of that dreamy, sad song, as vibrantly as the day I first played the album, back in the late 1960s: For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes? That song has stuck with me all these years, an anthem of the era, but strangely prescient. Who would have thought it would resonate in an entirely different way, 45 years later? Denny ……… click below for more ↓

How should a municipality deal with cigarette litter?

Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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I was sitting on a decorative rock on the landscaping west of Loblaws, this weekend, waiting while Susan was inside and amusing myself at the bad driving habits of our city visitors in the parking lot. I happened to look down and saw what little, rough grass there was, was almost totally buried in cigarette butts. Toxic, non-decaying, environmentally hazardous and socially hostile cigarette butts. Ugh. It’s not just there, it’s everywhere. Look along the streets, sidewalks, in the park grass. Thousands of cigarette butts, dozens, maybe hundreds of wrappers and packages every kilometer you walk. An estimated two million ……… click below for more ↓

The Game of the Book of Thrones

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Humour & Satire / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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No, it’s not about that heavyweight book series by George Martin, or the TV series based on it (or even about how you really need to read the books to understand anything that is happening in the TV series). It’s about the other throne, the porcelain one. And what books are best for reading thereon. Yes, reading on the toilet. Don’t tell me you just sit there and stare vacantly into space. This is important time. Those few rare minutes when we really have uninterrupted time to ourselves; quality time with our bodily functions unhampered by TV, by the phone, ……… click below for more ↓

A Little Uke on the Side

Arts / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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About 20 kilometres from home, while mentally playing the piece I had practiced all week, I asked myself if I had remembered to pack my tuner. I remembered taking it off the ukulele and placing it in my luggage. I had raced upstairs to put it away and grab a gig bag for the Boat Paddle uke, resting on its stand downstairs. Whew. Of course the tuner was safely stored in the luggage. And the uke was… my mental alarm sounded. Still sitting in its stand. Back home. I had been distracted, gathering my books for the trip, forgot about ……… click below for more ↓

Review: The Life of Pi

Arts / Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Music & Reviews / Religion3 Comments

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We watched Life of Pi last night, a film that has garnered much critical acclaim and won four coveted Oscar awards (although it has not been without controversies). I had struggled somewhat with the book (for reasons given below), but the lavish praise for the film made me decide to try again. I had read about the movie’s stunning camera work and CGI graphics, and these do not disappoint. It’s a beautiful film, and the CGI is amazingly lifelike. I puzzled over what was real and not in many scenes. But the story itself… While sometimes described as a “fantasy ……… click below for more ↓

Not All Words Are Equal, or Used Equally

Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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There’s an economic principle known as the rule of fungibility that states a commodity is equivalent to other units of the same commodity. For example, a litre of gasoline is the same commodity regardless of the brand or source. A bushel of wheat is the same regardless of the country. Ten dollars is ten dollars whether presented as a single bill or in smaller denominations. These are fungible items. But fungibility doesn’t apply to language. Words do not have an absolute base value, but are rather weighed in their context, and their source. A street thug telling his pack followers ……… click below for more ↓

It’s All About the Money

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics2 Comments

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Almost every council decision comes with the subtext question, “Can we afford it?” Everything not procedural or administrative is usually about the cost. Who pays, whose budget does it come from, is the money in reserves, can we get funding, can we use development charges, will it raise taxes, are there other options, are there partnerships – all these questions run through most discussions. Will it raise taxes? That’s crucial. No one wants to pay more. The economic path is simple: property owners pay taxes, municipalities spend them. Almost all of the money a municipality gets comes from the taxpayers; ……… click below for more ↓

More’s Speech to the Mob

Arts / Books & Reviews / Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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The scene is a riot, on the first day of May, 1517. It would later be known as Evil May Day,or Ill May Day. An angry mob, mostly comprised of apprentices, marched through the streets of London, their passion inflamed by a xenophobic speech made the past Easter by Dr. Bell (or Beal) at St. Paul’s Cross. Bell railed against the foreigners living in London, especially the wealthy foreign merchants and bankers. He called on all “Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal.” His words spread and festered, as racism is ……… click below for more ↓

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