Once in a while, everything you learn about a particular place just fits together in a coherent form. You know, when you ask about a particular destination, and the reports are all “on the same wavelength”.
posted in history | Comments Off on Not on my list of places to see | 245 words
Every Limbo boy and girl All around the Limbo world Gonna do the Limbo Rock All around the Limbo clock
– Sheldon/Strange interpreted by Chubby Checker c. 1962
posted in history | Comments Off on And deep theological uncertainty ensued | 370 words
As our bus rolled through a street construction site this evening, I watched the fellow on his small bulldozer, rolling back and forth to pack down a layer of sand. After all, the better the base is packed, the longer the road will last.
posted in history | Comments Off on Reminders of Dinky times | 380 words
I don’t have many food memories from when I was young. We ate wel enough, but there are no recipes that I can point to my children and say, there, that’s what I had when I was your age, or something equally frivolous.
posted in history | Comments Off on Sufficient for the supper | 303 words
Earlier this week, I watched the first half of a CBC docu-drama that revisited what has become known as the Oka crisis. I will be forced to miss the second section, but given that this is based on history, I at least know how it all “turned out”. Not as hard on a person as when the power fails during a first-run movie…
posted in history, media | Comments Off on In the eye of the beholder | 278 words
I spent today as a student. In-service training for me, so that I can provide in-service training to many others. The topic for today’s lesson was report cards.
posted in history | Comments Off on B+ is no longer good enough | 314 words
My university lost a fine teacher yesterday.
A lifetime spent teaching Latin and other Classics is one that won’t have much meaning to the youth in our schools today, but only a generation ago, the study of Latin still carried a value. The study of Latin at university was rare, but still recognized as worth something in intellectual terms.
posted in history | Comments Off on Nunc dimittis | 297 words
An early morning in September, with the first traces of autumn in the air. The business district starting up for another day of commerce. Traffic was fluid. The day shift was in place in the local factories. All the hustle and bustle of a major city. Almost nine years before, the greatest engineering structure in the area had been damaged, but none thought to forecast a total structural collapse. Fine steel and iron, set in place by the master builders from the Mohawk reserve in Kahnawake reserve, Strong foundation sunk deep into the bedrock below. And, without warning, disaster. The communications lines worldwide would hum with the news. A city would be brought to a standstill. Could this be the result of the ongoing war? (The Quebec Bridge collapsed on this day, ninety years ago.)
posted in history | Comments Off on On this day in history | 299 words
I have CBC radio on this evening, and the Randy Bachman show, Randy’s Vinyl Tap is presenting a mix of “summer tunes”. The man not only plays a mean guitar when he wants to, he also has access to a decent musical library. I mean, Mungo Gerry. Van Halen. Burton Cummings (a bit of a self-serving cheat, but I forgive the you rub my back, I’ll rub yours model this time).
posted in history, media | Comments Off on Summer music | 194 words
In an earlier time, the negative was everything. I don’t mean in a philosophical sense. No, this is the “real thing”; the photographic negative. For the common man, the print was the thing, but for the person behind the lens, the only part worth protecting was the negative, won through chemical combat. Fragile, almost opaque, tiny by comparison to the fruit sought after in printed form. We treated our negatives like the “apple of our eye”, barely daring to touch their surface. We dusted with fine hair brushes and compressed air, and storage was archival. If you damaged the negative, every print would bear a silent and lasting witness.
posted in history, technology | Comments Off on Few negative contexts | 265 words
