A Long Winter’s Night – Day 5: The Drunkard’s Song

| December 26, 2015

The shitfaced Elf from yesterday’s Long Winter’s Night did rather well when he so vigorously snatched the neck of his bottle with both eyes open. It’s often hard for someone in such a state as requires an earthquake to walk straight to divine which of the two objects standing before them is the genuine article. […]

A Long Winter’s Night 2015 – Day 4: A Greeting or Two

| December 25, 2015

There’s a standing traditional association of revelry at this Yule time, for reasons aforesaid, and with that comes the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Oh, and Elves. Not the consumption of them, you understand, it’s just that Elves are also associated with it all, for reasons not so clear other than it might have something to […]

A Long Winter’s Night 2015 – Day 2: All Things Great and Seasonal

| December 23, 2015

Cultural anthropologist Margaret Visser was for many years a regular on an assortment of radio programmes produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has authored six books on a variety of subjects ranging from the traditions of dinner to the expression of gratitude, linking the origins of the world we know to that of […]

A Long Winter’s Night 2015 – Day 1: Another Winter Solstice

| December 22, 2015

Pre-Christian history is full of spiritual beliefs that personify the sun as a deity who dies and is resurrected, even as the sun that reaches its shortest period of life in the sky is reborn to linger just a little longer each day in the blessed march toward what is hoped to be a new […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 17: Sharing

| October 17, 2015

My Boxing Day 2013 article, A Long Winter’s Night 2013 – Day 6: A Winter Lesson in Community, told the tale of a blizzard that buried my home town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia when I was about 3 years old, and how the citizenry had no choice but to suspend all matters of commerce and […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 10: What Died?

| October 10, 2015

We all know what rotting meat smells like, and hence the term, “What died?” has entered the popular lexicon. Just words though, Goode Reader, for there is a quantum leap in the experience that lies between pulling the lid off something found forgotten at the back of the fridge, and the full flower of meaning […]

Musings Upon My Natal Day

| April 23, 2015

Springtime is a season of many and varying complexions here in Nova Scotia, and one of the many reasons affecting all the seasons leading us to often remark that if you don’t find the weather to your liking, just wait a few minutes. Because of this, choosing one’s attire for the day is slightly complicated […]

A Long Winter’s Night 2014 – Day 1: All is Not Lost

| December 21, 2014

  Lore holds that the Wendigo is a malevolent forest spirit most active in Winter. While, under the right circumstances, it can be seen in its spirit state, it has no corporeal form. It feeds upon human flesh but is impotent to do so without first inhabiting a human host that provides it with the […]

Dark Sentiments 2014 – Day 30: Home Invasions

| October 30, 2014

We of the LFM Clan reside in an antique farm house sitting atop a granite foundation that readily affords access to our basement by all manner of creatures. To the degree, in fact, that our basement stands as its own balanced ecosystem. Mice and Moles, for example, regularly pass through, as do the Minks from […]

Dark Sentiments 2014 – Day 20: An Aside About Cannibalism

| October 20, 2014

Back in the early 1980’s, a young man came to work for a company I was consulting for, and it fell to me to train him in the arcane arts of installing and troubleshooting security and fire alarm systems. I befriended him in  a mentor kind of way, and learned he had spent much of […]