When I look at the news out of ‘Murica, I sometimes think that their civil war (1861 – 1865) never ended: it’s just that the fighting continues using politics as weapons and the streets and law-courts as the battlefields. There are an endless number of skirmishes on a few familiar topics: my rights vs. community …
INSPECTOR GAMACHE RIDES AGAIN
Louise Penny – All the Devils are Here – St. Martin’s Press, 2020 (An Inspector Gamache story) It used to be that movies and television shows relied on books for their inspiration. These days I’m beginning to suspect that crime/mystery novels are borrowing the techniques of popular television series. There is the first novel where …
REMEMBERING REMEMBRANCE DAY
Back in the 1970’s I lived for a time in Oxford, England. While there I supplemented my lack of income by working as a bookkeeper/receptionist at a boat yard located on an idyllic little spot beside the Thames, just outside the city. The yard rented canal boats for those that viewed drifting around the inland …
You Must Remember This
Collecting something for a hobby is a path to a number of undoubted pleasures. Whether it’s baseball cards, books or tea cozies, there’s the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of acquiring a unique item. On the other hand, there’s the feeling that you never have enough money to fuel your habit and the …
IT’S ALL A PLOT!
Get vaccinated, wear a mask, wash your hands frequently and keep a safe distance. It seems simple enough, but the REAL reason for the existence of COVID and its safety protocols is to stimulate conspiracy theories. Obviously the virus was manufactured in China in a plot to achieve world domination. It seems quite reasonable - …
More of Life’s Imponderables
With the earth warming and our summers becoming more hot and dry, why isn’t the sun evaporating more water from the oceans and making it rain more? Why are fire hydrants and signposts irresistible to dogs? Why is it the moment you get to the room where you needed to do something, you can’t remember …
Young Sheldon
YOUNG SHELDON - 2017 CBS – TV sitcom - Meet the Coopers, the family from Texas that produced Sheldon. There are those who will already recognize the name Sheldon Cooper (as played by Jim Parsons) as the quirky self-absorbed genius from the Big Bang Theory (2007-2019). In the Big Bang Theory Sheldon is more annoying …
Vive le Québec libre!
Kanadoodle's federal government spends about 2.4 billion dollars a year to promote bilingualism and ensure that everyone in Kanadoodle has a right to be misunderstood in either the French or English language (and that doesn’t even count the added consumer costs of bilingual product labeling). As a result, and in true Kanadoodle fashion, this has …
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2021 - ‘The Imitation Game’ is the movie that introduced many people to the story of Bletchley Park during WWII. The group of ‘boffins’ and assorted geniuses at Bletchley included Alan Turing, who developed a computer that broke the Nazi military codes and likely helped shorten the …
The Outlander by Gil Adamson
The Outlander by Gil Adamson, House of Anansi Press, 2007 - It begins in the frontier west - the age of horse and buggy with a widow in flight. She’s young and on the run after having killed her husband. She’s barely keeping ahead of two armed and dangerous looking men – her brothers-in-law. We …
Richard's Left Bank 