My two dogs are funny creatures. They teach me so many important life lessons. Take when I put treats in their respective dishes. I will drop an identical handful of goodies in each dish, simultaneously. You know exactly what’s going to happen, don’t you? Of course– Holly bolts for Meic’s dish, while Meic dashes over…
In the Christian Bible, the story is told of Mary Magdalene, in her distress and tears, encountering Jesus after having seen him crucified. She had watched him die and be buried, so through her tears she thought the man in front of her to be a gardener. Seeing the tomb empty, she sobbed “What have…
Paul Collins, writing about autists, says “Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It’s that you’re destroying the peg.” Collins’ dictum brought me up short, not because I’ve had that much experience with the autistic, but…
Everybody needs to feel special. And, to be sure, everyone is special. Unique, in some way or another. Heaven knows, this blog keeps banging away at that very concept. But it needs to be special for a good reason. A useful reason. A noble reason. Not a trumped-up, selfish reason. Let’s take my very personal…
On August 19, 1942, just over six thousand commandos, mostly Canadian, were dropped off on the beaches at Dieppe, an exploratory raid to test invasion theories. Although the defenses were well known, little had been done to soften up the bunkers and pillboxes glowering down from the cliffs. It was not pretty. Nearly two thirds…
I should probably add English Muffins and French Toast to the list. Here we talk about names which describe things unrecognizable to the natives. Canadians visiting the US or the Caribbean are offered Canadian Bacon on the breakfast menu. Having no idea what is meant, they’ll order it only to discover it’s just run of…
In a move to cut costs, optometrists are using cheap eye charts made by illiterate children in sketchy print shops in third world countries. In my younger years the letters used to be crisp and sharp, all the way down to the last line. Not these cheap substitutes – the blur begins on about the…
When we first acquired our little acreage on the Tay River, there were trees. Of a sort. Certainly we had several majestic old maples and white oaks and a few dozen white pines that had been planted perhaps twenty years before. The green ash were just starting to show the depredations of the emerald ash…
Most of the strife and disharmony in our world flows directly from too many rules being made without regard to the Tweeches Zone. Let me explain and illustrate. “Ukrainians,” says Putin, “have no separate existence outside Mother Russia, and should just settle down and accept that fact.” “Women,” say the mullahs “need to keep covered,…
Finding your Giftings, even well into your career, can be difficult, leaving many of us feeling rather aimless and dissatisfied in our work. It would therefore be lovely if there were a Giftings Fairy who could come along and sprinkle a little bit of Perception Dust on you, and you would then know instantly what…