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Poem – A Button Missing
The stack, a vertical grey against the blue, flinging strands — smoke? — but they’re white. Let’s be generous and say its steam. Birds wheel in play or in anger: What I saw; what I saw. The chair creaks, the wood beneath it groans; on the back, a cashmere sweater, draped where it was hung, [...]
Continue reading...Principles of Literary Criticism, by I. A. Richards
6. October 2010
There is nothing worse than a glib thirty-year-old academic who has absolute confidence in the possibility of certainty. Reading Ivor Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism, I was seized every five pages by an impulse to hurl the book at the wall. I resisted because the people from Routledge tell me this book is a modern [...]
Continue reading...How ever will we float this baby?
1. October 2010
Life on earth could thrive. Life on earth could soar. Right now things seem stuck. What holds us down? What keeps us from a higher living? I’ve offered a couple suggestions. What flags would you put on those mooring lines?
Continue reading...Squawking about Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
30. September 2010
Flaubert’s Parrot is a literary romp by Julian Barnes that tracks the obsessive research of a widowed doctor named Geoffrey Braithwaite. Along the way, Dr. Braithwaite considers all kinds of arcane details about the famed French novelist: his sexual proclivities, plots for unwritten novels, and the use of animals in his writing. This last includes [...]
Continue reading...Toronto images from Queen’s Quay & The Esplanade
15. September 2010
Lately, the photos I’ve been taking have been more in the nature of research. I still try to capture good images, but what I’m really after is documentation. As I write my novel, Hogtown, I scout locations for the scenes of upcoming chapters. I’m planning a chapter set on Saturday June 26th on the Esplanade [...]
Continue reading...Non-advice to kids going to university
14. September 2010
Apart from an Oscar-nominated film, “an education” is the title of life in my household this September. Both my kids are off to university and, to my delight and surprise, both are in liberal arts programs. This ought to feel like a milestone when we parents get all misty-eyed and say sentimental things that begin [...]
Continue reading...Hogtown! A Novel – Introduction
13. September 2010
I’ve decided to write a novel set against the G20 Summit which took place in Toronto earlier this summer. Standing at the corner of Queen & Bay Streets on June 26th, standing there as windows smashed all around me, the predominant feeling I had was a feeling of bewilderment. I looked at my wife, who [...]
Continue reading...Bob Lake
3. September 2010
Who is Bob? Remember the crazy killer named Bob on Twin Peaks? Maybe the lake was named after him. Or maybe it was named for someone even more insane, my uncle Bob Barker, the guy who loved to kiss women and talk about the price of refrigerators and what was behind his doors. Whatever the [...]
Continue reading...Lake Catchacoma
3. September 2010
By the end of the summer in southern Ontario, there’s enough daytime temperature variation that you’ll get a misty condensation above the water in the early morning. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a photographic orgasm, as I did, on Sunday morning looking east across Lake Catchacoma in the Kawartha Lakes region. The water is glassy [...]
Continue reading...If Reading is Consumption, then Writing is Excretion
23. July 2010
E-ink is a lie. It tries to persuade us that writing is black. While I don’t doubt that some of it is black, the very best writing appears in brown ink. That’s because the very best writing is smeared on the page in shit. Romantics say the author writes from the heart. Intellectuals say the [...]
Continue reading...Ireland Park & Toronto Railway Lands
22. July 2010
Opened on June 21, 2007, Ireland Park is a small memorial to the 38,000 Irish refugees who fled the potato famine of 1847 and were received in Toronto (which then had a population of 20,000). Imagine today if Toronto opened its arms to almost twice as many refugees as its own population! The park is [...]
Continue reading...The Cloud Economy: Computing as a Social Justice Issue
21. July 2010
“a writer who doesn’t want her work to be read by everyone doesn’t deserve to be read by anyone” While the question of cloud computing – is it a good thing? what are its benefits? how will it change the way we interact online? – sounds like it properly belongs in the province of geekdom, [...]
Continue reading...Kirk Newman’s Community and the Importance of Context
13. July 2010
On Bloor St. E. in Toronto, you’ll find a large bronze sculpture of 21 life size figures titled “Community” by Kirk Newman and commissioned by Manulife Financial in 2001. Here’s what we learn on Kirk Newman’s web site about the sculpture: “Community” is a spectacular bronze sculpture consisting of 21 life-size figures, standing proudly on [...]
Continue reading...Photos from Toronto Pride Parade 2010
5. July 2010
Here are 300 images from yesterday’s 30th annual Toronto Pride Parade which wraps up Pride Week, a nice change from the G20 circus that rolled into town last week. The parade was longer than I remember in previous years, maybe because there’s a municipal election coming in October and each mayoralty candidate wanted to court [...]
Continue reading...Black Bloc McProtest
2. July 2010
On Friday June 25, 2010, the day before the G20 Summit, I accompanied my wife to her place of work on the northern limit of the secured zone in Downtown Toronto. I went partly out of concern for her and partly out of curiosity. After saying good-bye to my wife, I walked east along Wellington [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
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15. October 2010
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