Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
I’ve recently had what might best be described as my very first mid-life moment. At the sober age of forty-four it feels as if I’ve been initiated into a secret fraternal organization — so secret in fact that I didn’t know it existed until I was qualified to join. My epiphany — if you want to call it that — arrived early in the morning last Saturday.
Today, we hear from the Toronto area that a new idea is being floated. With a provincial election coming in October, Ontario Premier, Dalton McGuinty, is seriously considering the proposal that we rename the 172 kilometre stretch of Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto. We should call it Highway of Heroes.
There is a popular perception that we (by “we” I unwittingly reveal my North American/Western bias) live in an increasingly secular society which has no room for religious values.
I finally got around to reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer winning second novel, Gilead. I think she will forgive me for taking so long, since she herself has no particular regard for the passage of time. It has been more than twenty odd years since the publication of her first novel, Housekeeping. And the prose itself proceeds in a way that is more aligned with things timeless than with things urgent.
You’ve heard the old joke, right? What’s brown and sits on the piano bench? Beethoven’s second movement.
Just days after Benedict issued a motu proprio announcing the return of the Latin mass, the CDF announced that, in effect, the Protestant denominations suffer from a “wound” because they are not the true Church.
We tend to be dismissive of ancient stories. Often these tales use a strange and stilted language and feature characters with odd names, and the stories unfold in formulaic ways that jar with our 21st century sensibilities. Sometimes we see no points of intersection with our life today.
Going “off the Bloor Street viaduct” used to be a fairly common event. In his novel, In the Skin of the Lion, Michael Ondaatje imagines the first such going “off the Bloor Street viaduct.”
Yesterday my daughter graduated from junior high school. There were the usual presentations and the usual boring speeches from grown–ups. The customary shtick—you are our future—you are our hope—utterly forgettable. And then the Honourable Kathleen Wynn, MPP spoke.
In addition to 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.
If you had any doubt before, recent Gallup Polls conducted in the U.S. provide ample evidence that knowledge has nothing to do with knowing and an awful lot to do with politics.
In my previous post I touched on a question of propriety in writing: is it acceptable for an author of fiction to allow her work to be influenced by politics? In this post I want to turn the question on its head and ask: is it acceptable for an author of politics to allow her work to be influenced by fiction?
How do we know that what we see is real? This question is old hat for your average philosopher. In early modernity, Descartes posed it in different ways, but one way in particular seems to have captured the Western imagination and has reared its ugly philosophical head in countless sci fi flicks.
Two middle–aged sisters with families of their own are suddenly faced with the challenge of an aging father who is determined to marry a thirty–something woman from his native Ukraine.
Every now and then I turn off my spam filters to see what are the latest trends. I’m always astonished at the number of male “enhancement” products. Viagra, cialis, aphrodisiacs & penis patches.