Special Edition– Please Read Now

Among the many American stories which are part true and part myth is the heroic saga of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark whose well-funded expedition, between 1804 and 1806 adventured across North America from the white-settled East to the Pacific. Almost without exception, Americans will tell you confidently that this was the first such voyage…

Two things caught my attention this week past. First, Mondrian’s “painting” New York City I has been hanging upside down for over seventy-five years, and nobody noticed until now. And the second, not unrelated, is the CUPE strike in Ontario. To be fair to Mondrian and the critics, the “painting” is actually just a whole…

For rats in Alberta, 2020 was the best year in a long time. Their population doubled to twenty-six, although only one at a time. The bad news for the rats is that was as good as it got. As each one snuck into the province on a truck or a railway car, it was quickly…

If only it were always Saturday night. But that’s not how life works, especially in economics. John Maynard Keynes was a British economist, perhaps the most influential of all times. He lent his name to an entire branch of economics, the Keynesian approach, likely the most durable of all economic theories. Keynes was troubled by…

My natural paternal grandfather died long before I was born. In fact, he passed away when my own Dad was only five. Thus I only knew what I had heard, which wasn’t much. It also wasn’t nice. Apparently he was not known to have held a job, but sat at home smoking and brooding while…

Recently my trusty old keyboard became too wonky for my level of patience, so off it went to electronics heaven. Too many cookie crumbs, too many coffee spills, I suspect. I dug around my “bits and pieces” bin and found one I had forgotten about, set it up, and before long was using it to…