This week’s piece is a mixture of serious and not-so-much. I was working on something for the local newspaper, which for some reason sees fit to print my articles – personal perspectives and something topical from the news. My submission this week is titled, “O, Canada”. It included bits of Canadian history – my mother was Canadian, and a lament about the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Canada. If you haven’t been keeping up, Canada has decided to go ahead with its federal election in April, despite its designation as our “51st state” by Donald Trump, who calls the Canadian Prime Minister, “Governor.” That designation seems to be going over well, almost as successful as the “Gulf of America”.
Continue reading “Renewing my Canadian Roots”Month: March 2025
Emerging from Winter
We’re enjoying the first prolonged stretch of warm weather. Earlier ones were a tease, because then it got cold again. Today is the first day that I haven’t turned up the heat as I got up, and we slept with a window open in the bedroom. There was a bunny, a small one, sniffing around my gardens out front – it kept its back to me, guilty no doubt because the minute my new bulbs start to sprout, he/she/they will be waiting. I was looking out back too, yesterday morning, and saw a possum emerging from the swampy area behind the house, what we call the “dell”. Admittedly, we watch a lot of UK television.
Continue reading “Emerging from Winter”Don’t Bother Leaving a Message
Some time ago – actually five years, if I’m counting, I wrote about answering machines and voice mail, which had been, it seems, the gold standard for reaching out to friends and family. Some of you older folks remember when they were first developed, with separate devices hooked up to the telephone. Cordless phones were the size of FBI walkie-talkies, and we had to plug in car phones. Yes, answering machines were so innovative, such an improvement. Until they’d be filled up with junk callers, telemarketers, and stuff we didn’t need to hear. Then, we’d get unseemly pleas from the technology to “please empty your voicemail.”
Continue reading “Don’t Bother Leaving a Message”The Daigneaults
My late father-in-law grew up in the rich, rolling farming country of far northern New York, just west of Lake Champlain along the Saint Lawrence River. It was a largely French population that had moved south from Quebec, where village names like Chateaugay dotted the map. Alfred was one of ten children, second youngest in a large farming family whose name, Dore, with an accent over the “e”, evolved from “dor-EH” to the anglicized “DOR-ah”, the “e” switched to “a”.
Continue reading “The Daigneaults”
I'm Thinking...No! 