“Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem, / Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias.  It is hard to abruptly shrug off a long-established love, / Hard, but this somehow you must do.”  – Robert Galbraith, Lethal White.  I see her but she doesn’t see me. I pass her by with her friends and classmates, but not a glance… Read More »

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”  Anne Frank. We all have our dark nature, capable of harming our own kind and other creatures, with or without provocation. In wars,… Read More »

“And it arose not because of mystical ‘ghosts from the past’ but as the result of specific actions of people who disliked their existing democracies. They disliked them because they were too weak or too imitative, too indecisive or too individualistic – or because they personally were not advancing fast enough within them.” — Anne Applebaum, Twilight of… Read More »

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” – Louise Penny, The Madness of Crowds (2021) “A future that might bring about our end does not negate the majesty of the journey we are still taking.” –… Read More »

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”  Ernest Hemingway Life I sprung up from somewhere in circumstances right or wrong without my consent. I would have liked it but conditions were less than ideal. There were lots of struggles… Read More »

There it is looking high and mighty, the mountain of hope for the poorest and neglected people of the country. Its beauty lies underneath. The early morning start of garbage trucks dumping the thrashes of the well-off is sweet music and not an irritant for those eking a living for the non-stop pile-ups. It means there is work… Read More »

“Rome! Stick to Rome, my dear fellow, and live in the limelight!” – Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero has just finished his early morning mental and physical exercises when he summons Tiro to bring in his first client of the day.  “Master,” Tiro announces, “I bring you Sthenius of Thermae.”  Right away Cicero smells a victim of corruption. “Sthenius,… Read More »

The Angry Man “I’d never before seen anything that gave, all at once, so many signals of anger and the wish to destroy.” – Kazoo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021) Our neighbourhood is the quietest street in our community, whether during the day or night. Weekend parties are rare so most of the noises are coming from… Read More »

“Tackling climate change presents a big challenge and an even greater opportunity for Canada, one that will impact all of our lives, and those of generations to come. Our nation’s plan to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions down to ‘net-zero’ by 2050 requires the largest change to our economy in our lifetime, and one that RBC is fully… Read More »

“I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”  Kazoo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun Laughter rang loud in the house whenever I was at home. My three young daughters liked to do that just to piss me in a playful way. Marla, the eldest at… Read More »