My wife Jean and I once trekked 1,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail. It took us three months with our 45 lb. packs strapped to our backs as we slogged our way up and down the peaks of North America’s oldest mountains from Georgia to West Virginia and beyond. It was the summer of 1992. […]
No other public library system in the world is bigger and busier than Toronto’s. Not New York. Not London. Us. Nearly 70 per cent of Torontonians use the Toronto Public Library. During the pandemic, with every one of its 100 branches closed, online demand has more than doubled. The Library has even launched a digital
The Plague-Ground – Librarians are first-responders Read More »
I’ve always wanted to write a fund-raising appeal that starts with that question. You have money. We need money. Give it to us. Please. What this lacks in subtlety it makes up in reality: rich people have more of the very thing you need than unrich people do. So if you can focus on them,
Last month, The New York Times reported on the rise of abortions by telemedicine. A doctor assesses the woman online. Then, if she is ‘approved’, she is mailed some pills. One thing driving this is a clampdown by Trump faithful and conservative courts on abortion clinics in America. But the bigger factor seems to be
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to spend a day exploring a part of the world that billions of us visit every day, that’s completely transformed pretty much everything in our lives – and didn’t exist until 1990. That place of course is the internet. And what better time to view its distant
The Plague-Ground – Travel to a new world. No cost. No waiting. Satisfaction guaranteed. Read More »
Commencement Speech season started this weekend with Barack Obama delivering two of them online: one to high school students and one to the graduates of historically-black colleges, where he said: “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what
When I was half my age, I used to believe that idea from Robert Frost. Now, I’m more into the “in length” part of life’s cycle. But I was reminded twice yesterday how the world can change long before it enters us. I was on the phone with an old friend Dr. Joe MacInnis, and
The Plague-Ground – Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length Read More »
When was the last time you saw those three words in a sentence? Applied to Ottawa? In a pandemic? Exactly. Our expectation of speedy service from any government, let alone the Feds, is so low that anything short of craven indifference is hailed as miraculous. Perhaps it’s time we put this bias aside. When Ottawa
I heard this from Heather Ross who was speculating why fewer people seem to be having heart attacks during the pandemic than before. Maybe it’s because we exercise, get more sleep, spend more time with our families and less time getting to and from work. I say ‘speculating’ because Dr. Ross doesn’t do that. She’s
The Plague-Ground – “In Spain people are renting out their dogs for walking.” Read More »
Thirty years ago today, I left Talbott Recovery Center in Atlanta where I’d been in treatment for four months for cocaine addiction. I flew home to Toronto where Jean met me at the airport and took me directly to the plot of land on Georgian Bay where we pitched a tent and where we are
Yesterday, I tripped over one of those New Yorker articles that snatches you and carries you into the black holes of a subject you knew absolutely nothing about. It then pops you to the surface 30 minutes later gasping at the bizarre and amazing things thing you saw. So it was with Thirty-six Thousand Feet
The Plague-Ground – When is a nurse worth more than a baseball player? Read More »
I’ve noticed something odd in my Zoom calls, and maybe you have too. It’s that they sound better when the video is Off than when it’s On. By this I mean the experience is richer and more ‘real’. This may not be as true when there are a dozen square screens of bobbing faces on
