A Long Winter’s Night – Let the Good Guys Win

| December 31, 2011

I’ll be looking at the past year in a retrospective tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s my favourite New Year’s Eve song, dedicated tonight to Sarge, a persecuted dog you’ll be reading more about here in the very near future because in my opinion, what’s being done to Sarge and his family in the name […]

A Long Winter’s Night – The Mahone Bay Riot

| December 30, 2011

Mahone Bay is a tiny and picturesque town on the south shore of Nova Scotia with a population that has been steadily shrinking for decades, mostly due to natural causes. On the thirty-first day of January 2001, a landmark business in that town, Bills Department Store, closed for good, but not before it had borne […]

A Long Winter’s Night – Hell’s Seasonal Contribution to Child Rearing

| December 29, 2011

As promised yesterday, here we are for a romp on the dark side. What else is new? Northern Europe is home to a rich cornucopia of mythology centered around the doings of entities, deities, and personalities that practice their own rituals at this time of the rolling year. Born of harsher times, these are naturally […]

A Long Winter’s Night – Dark Creatures for Dark Times

| December 28, 2011

Every time I embark on a series of articles that connect with a theme, for example Dark Sentiments that runs the entire 31 days of October each year, and now A Long Winter’s Night which will likewise be an annual event running from 21-31 December, my fevered brain generates content that far o’erflows the allotted […]

A Long Winter’s Night – Harmony

| December 27, 2011

“Relax the Eyes, See The Candle ‘Breathe’ ~ Now Take Time ~ Take Time for Reflection – Thank Your Ancestors, Regain your Direction & Become ‘Ready’….” ~ Master at Arms James A. Keating For those caught up in its currents, a lot of you are now in that all too familiar state of holiday depletion […]

A Long Winter’s Night – Of Firsts, Films, and Food

| December 26, 2011

Last evening Mrs. LFM and I did something that’s an annual tradition for some people, but we’ve never done before – I took her to the Christmas Day opening of a movie. Specifically, we viewed the 2011 incarnation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Clicking on the embedded link will take you to the […]

A Long Winter’s Night – A Seasonal Sound Track

| December 25, 2011

Whether you be celebrating or just suffering through it, here we are on Christmas Day! Most of you probably are at a point where reading one of my usual diatribes will be impossible because you’ll be scanning the same line repeatedly, so I’m going to spare you in favour of a brief introduction to some […]

A Long Winter’s Night – The Comfort of Ritual: This Ain’t It

| December 24, 2011

Mrs. LFM and I had traditional Christmas experiences in our mutual upbringings. We both grew up steeped in that peculiar amalgam of Christian observances,  family traditions, seasonal flavours and smells,  feverish preparation, and breathless anticipation that, for us kids, began with the arrival of the first Christmas gift catalogues mere weeks following the annual return […]

A Long Winter’s Night – Festivus

| December 23, 2011

If you’ve ever met anyone who watched even one episode of Seinfeld, you’ve heard of Festivus, AKA “A festivus for the rest of us”. If you’ve dug a little further, you’ll also know that today is the day. The origins of Festivus are not lost in antiquity. They lie in the writings and family practices […]

A Long Winter’s Night – What Are You Saying Exactly?

| December 22, 2011

“We plunged into the cornucopia quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.” ~ Adult Ralphie narrating about diving with his brother into the gifts under the Christmas tree, A Christmas Story (1983) Today is the very day I talked about yesterday – the Winter Solstice is upon us and tomorrow the sun begins […]