Randy | February 26, 2018
If you ain’t from around here, you probably won’t know how many tweaks and revisions the national anthem of Canada — O Canada — has undergone since it was first performed, as a French poem set to music, on 24 June 1880. As with any popular patriotic song, it went through a series of translations, […]
Randy | January 14, 2018
Our title today paraphrases G. K. Chesterton’s observation that, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” The poem was inspired by a combination of current meteorological realities here in Nova Scotia, and some reading I’ve been doing on daily life of British and Commonwealth soldiers in […]
Randy | December 28, 2017
“As to Human kind, Winter will bring challenges at the end of which the result will lie on a spectrum ranging from the greatest of joys to the gravest of sorrows, and in this it stands as no different from any other aspect of life but for bearing a greater degree of urgency and inexorable […]
Randy | December 27, 2017
If you live in my neck of the woods, a lot of you lost electric power Christmas afternoon, and some will still be waiting for it until some time tonight. If you lack more “natural” means of heating your dwelling, things have gotten a bit cold, and the usual mid-season burnout has turned into quite […]
Randy | December 24, 2017
Someone most of us here have enjoyed the benefit of “knowing” since our childhood embarks on another perilous journey tonight, and few have every paused to consider the strategic, tactical, and logistical realities of a Grand Mission that, done half-assed, could end up being Nick’s last ride. He’s been at this a while so it […]
Randy | December 22, 2017
Yesterday I offered you all a poem that chronicles a more primal and realistic approach to the onset of Winter than one usually encounters in this pseudo-enlightened age. The first, To Yip Roll and Frisk!, views the anticipation of Winter’s arrival and revelation from the unbridled perspective of children and Dogs. To Yip and Roll […]
Randy | December 21, 2017
Winter in Nova Scotia will arrive at twenty-eight minutes past noon Atlantic Standard Time today when the Solstice heralds the start of the long, slow plod to Spring. For those of us of whatever species who haven’t already migrated or gone into hibernation, this is a time of uncertainty tempered with incipient joy. The Black […]
Randy | November 5, 2017
Comedy set against the decidedly unfunny backdrop of war isn’t anything new. To name a few examples, we have comedy in all its hues appearing in films like Kelly’s Heroes (WWII), Inglorious Basterds (WWII), Catch 22 (WWII), and MASH (Korean War). On television we have the examples of Hogan’s Heroes (WWII), McHale’s Navy (WSWII), MASH […]
Randy | October 29, 2017
“The sagas tell two tales of Freydís – one that marks her as brave and admirable, the other much less so. But the sagas were written centuries after the events they describe, and as we know from reading incarnations of The Bible, influential literature can be depended upon to contain a healthy dose of axe […]
Randy | October 28, 2017
Folklore comes from the same place as Human spirituality in that it springs from a need to understand the forces of the Universe by putting their obvious influences into some sort of context. On a human level, it is also crafted to convey time tested lessons of conduct to each succeeding generation. In this effort […]