No matter how bad they are, most of the time, disasters tend to be localized events -hurricanes, tsunamis, even droughts – that areas recover from soon after the event. Covid is the perfect disaster in a few ways… 1. Its devastation is truly worldwide. I was reading a book about pandemics and the author observed […]
“Fuck The Police” – NWA Here’s a few other random thoughts about what’s happening in the US the past few days after the murder of unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a group of Minneapolis Police Officers. * I honestly thought that the US was on the verge of something ugly (uglier?) because of COVID-19 […]
Shea and I had been tossing around the idea of upgrading to a bigger camper for a couple years but Covid sort of forced our hand this year. The initial restrictions for campgrounds included the fact that bathrooms would be closed and people would only be allowed to use their own camper’s facilities. Our rPod […]
I joined the board of Coteau Books in early 2012 but this photo of the board is from January 2016. Coteau entered bankruptcy earlier this year so this is from happier times and what happy times they were. During my many years on the Coteau board, I met such a wide range of great people […]
In a time of unprecedented challenges, the big debate in libraryland is how/when libraries should reopen. There are good reasons on both sides of the ledger but as Saskatchewan libraries inch closer to reopening, here’s a few of the main ones… LIBRARIES *SHOULD* BEGIN RE-OPENING 1. The single biggest reason libraries should be reopening is […]
There are still a lot of details to be worked out but the NHL has announced a very rough plan for what reopening would look like… season is officially over 24 teams eligible for playoffs one “play-in” round before going to the normal 16-team format games to be held in two “hub” cities with players […]
This is pretty special – my dad was getting some barn boards from our farm to use in framing projects and found one where my grandfather had done some accounting as he sold grain to others (according to dad, he remembers the grain being sold by the five gallon pail.) My brother-in-law stained the board, […]
Jason Isbell, one of the greatest living songwriters today, did a free concert to promote the release of his new album, “Reunions”, and though lots of artists are doing live streams from their living rooms and their music rooms and so on, this might be the first one I’ve seen that’s tried to re-create much […]
I’ve been joking about it since about week two of quarantine but as we head into the third month of quarantine, the family decided it was time for me to have a haircut and beard trim. They also decided they should all help. This is the result… (and I wish I could blame the scratch […]
This had been a shitty year for me, even before the COVID pandemic hit. Coteau Books, which was a long-standing literary press in Canada for nearly half a century, and which I’d served on the board of directors of for nearly a decade, entered bankruptcy protection in late February. I’ll likely do a longer post […]
