Randy | December 23, 2019
When I was growing up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, long before the cultivation of Christmas Trees as agricultural operations had become a major industry, my Father had innumerable friends and customers who owned woodland we were granted freedom to harvest our annual Balsam Fir from. It was a big deal because my Father had high […]
Randy | December 22, 2019
Welcome back to the hearth Goode Reader, and this incarnation of A Long Winter’s Night. The Winter Solstice stole upon us at 12:19 Atlantic Time this morning and today offers 14 minutes short of 7 hours less daylight than at the occasion of the Summer Solstice in June. The bittersweet news is that it all gets […]
Randy | November 11, 2019
“… If you think those wars and the things these people were or are called upon to do, are horribly wrong, then I would suggest that every one of them might agree with you, for let it never be forgotten that the soldier hates war worse than anyone, but being good at waging it does […]
Randy | October 31, 2019
Here we are again, Goode Reader, at the end of another season of Dark Sentiments. Our most heartfelt thanks to you all for joining us and staying the course As regular attendees will recall, this is not only All Hallows Eve, the night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead […]
Randy | October 25, 2019
“Man, a social animal, seeks to live in communities, varying in size from remote single family homesteads, to congested cities made of high rise buildings. Where you live most likely fits somewhere in between – those popularly referred to as “homeless” I will speak to in a future article in this series, for they cannot […]
Randy | October 22, 2019
Another rite of passage piece with echos of last season’s Willie and the Bear. The term “traveller’s lantern”, perverted to Hunter’s lantern here, and not to be confused with Hunter’s Moon, refers to a time when safe travel was denied to the average bloke between the last quarter, through new, and to the first quarter of […]
Randy | October 21, 2019
The eye is the primary sensory tool of the Human animal. Coupled to a brain predisposed to seek out patterns and sift them through a sieve of instincts and memories, the sense of sight is and always has been instrumental in keeping us alive. But it has weaknesses that become most evident when darkness falls, […]
Randy | October 19, 2019
I first introduced expert in all things Old Norse, Dr. Jackson Crawford, in last February’s A Long Winter’s Night — Ascent to Spring Edition: The Cowboy Hávamál. We already know HOW you get into Valhalla — the hard way. Tonight he’s back with the answer to that other burning question — WHO gets into Valhalla? […]
Randy | October 17, 2019
“Upon further examination, we found a trap – a steel trap dating back to the time when the Hudson Bay Company ran things around here. Rusted and busted this trap was embedded in the mesa’s dirt for centuries. We looked it over and left it laying there. We never remove anything from its resting place. […]
Randy | October 16, 2019
It was an afternoon in the late 1970’s when I attended my first, and so far only, estate auction, inside the lofty, creaky confines of an ancient Halifax auction house. I was there in the company of two friends with whom was shared an interest in antique instruments of mayhem, and the newspaper listing for […]