An Agreed Upon Statement of Facts

| June 1, 2025

Image © Amy Baker 2020 (instagram.com/amy_louisebaker) “It’s a beautiful thing to refuse to forget…” ~ Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master What ho oh Weary Pilgrim, and welcome to this watch fire hard by the Yawning Rabbit Hole of Confusion. First, something to clarify at least the legal definition of today’s headline: “More than 90 per […]

The Fencing Lesson of the Leaning Hemlock

| April 13, 2025

This poem was inspired by two utterances of Wisdom from wellsprings I drink from routinely. The first is this segment from Maestro Adam Crown‘s exquisite Swordmastery YouTube channel, being a four minute video titled The Law of Conservation of Combat — Bogart’s Fencing Lesson. The other is a story from the website of the Ronin […]

T’ick o’ Fog (Part 2)

| January 19, 2025

Previously in this series: T’ick o’ Fog (Part 1) Welcome back Goode Reader to this second installment of T’ick o’ Fog. Today we will look at a variety of “fog” that may not be foremost in the mind where atmospheric phenomena normally hold pride of place. I speak, of course, of metaphorical fog, which draws […]

A Long Winter’s Night — Advice As We Embark

| January 1, 2025

Greetings Goode and Weary Pilgrims as we embark together on another Hunt, joyous in the comradeship of our Worthy fellows even as many among our number may have been lamed by the vicissitudes of months past. We aren’t dead yet. An odd time this. In my travels upon the land, I find even the Wise […]

Midwinter Story Time With LFM

| December 29, 2024

In thanks to all those who have noticed my absence of late and felt motivated either to take up arms in proclaiming their disquiet, or clutch them tight to suffer in silence, I offer this brief walk in yesterday’s woods and my promise that you will find yourselves back to being tired of me soon […]

Deer Season 2024

| November 2, 2024

My Esteemed Friend Martin, of Crime Scene Man fame was once in the employ of a police agency in a small Nova Scotia town that had come to contain a population of White Tail Deer of, let us say, unsound proportions. One day, while on patrol, he was driving a street running along the edge […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 18: Haunted House Insurance

| October 18, 2024

In my over 40 year career of advising clients in the methods and madness of protecting their persons, property and interests, I have been consulted many times for recommendations on solutions to problems that were so wildly unlikely to manifest as to be undetectable on any actuarial table as a potential cause of death or […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 12: A Flicker of Clarity

| October 12, 2024

The elements of the picture at the top of tonight’s Dark Sentiment combine thoughts placed here seven years ago as Dark Sentiments Season 8 — Day 3: Of Mini-miracles, Odd Synchronicities, and Sublime Messages, and more recently in On the Weihnachtsjäger Trail. The feather gifted to me, and spoken of in the former, is the […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 7: Handicrafts for Long Nights

| October 7, 2024

Paper as an element of expression is not limited to a simple passive platform for paint or ink, and tonight’s Dark Sentiment offers two delightful examples from that other fold — Origami.

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 5: A Man Of His Times

| October 5, 2024

“All this to bring us here tonight where no man is of a piece, unless that’s all you’ve left of him.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 2: Authority With your blood clearly still up from last night’s Sword Dance, I would be remiss in abandoning the saga of Donald McBane whose early experiments […]