When I was in grade twelve I answered an advertisement thumb-tacked to the school bulletin board and for a few months I was the drummer for Velvet Jones, a rock band named after a Saturday Night Live character and dedicated to exploring the musical middle ground between Tom Jones and The Velvet Underground. The audition… Read more »
Whenever I think of birthdays I think about a line from an old 50’s tune, “You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt” (Merle Travis). According to the Princeton Review, MBA students are prime examples of older students who cannot easily access other means of university funding,… Read more »
July is upon us, and out here in the big city on the Wet Coast the rain clouds have temporarily departed and the dog days of summer are lying in the shadow of our front porch, their tails swishing and their tongues hanging to the ground. It’s the time of year that a middle-aged gourmand’s… Read more »
A few weeks ago I was walking our dog around the neighbourhood, when I came across a woman pulling weeds from the flower garden in front of her home. I complemented her on her beautiful cottage which, with its thatched roof and ivy covered-walls, reminded of a Hobbit house, or an illustration from a Beatrix… Read more »
ST. JOHN’S, Nfld. (CUP) — Michael Moore and controversy go hand in hand, but no more than the rage surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11. But controversy does not a movie make, and you will hear no more of it from me. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a portrait of a man. It is a film about how this man… Read more »
A good feeling, isn’t it, to bring another around to one’s point of view, converting opinions the way we might exchange currency, say yen for Eurodollars? Let’s face it, most of us feel pretty strongly that we have a better grip on reality than our neighbours. Oh, certainly some of us do present an aspect… Read more »
Don’t you love summer weekends? There’s no other time in which one can feel truly justified in doing absolutely nothing of consequence. Last weekend was one of those times – no responsibilities, no timetables, just four days in which my husband, our dog and myself could do anything (or nothing) of our choosing. We spent… Read more »
It’s been many years since I attended summer school, in fact I can’t say I’ve ever really done it before. I’ve taken courses that run at different times of the year, but this is the first time I’ve taken a course that actually has a summer component in which I have to physically attend a… Read more »
Crumbs The early days when you lived in the one-room apartment above Balducci’s Deli that whole summer spent with the windows open and the fan going Commercial Drive’s melody floating in making us a part of the action days when your apartment above the deli’s kitchen was fifteen degrees hotter than outside we’d strip down… Read more »
On a recent flight from Vancouver to New York, I spent the duration listening to music and reading magazines. In that time I’m certain that the Bow Wow Wow song “I want candy” never once played on the in-flight radio, nor did the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar”, but in retrospect, they should have, for once I… Read more »