I am a chopper of wood and carrier of water, a keeper of bees, digger of soil, and washer of dishes, but when people ask me "what do you do" I usually satisfy them with "I'm in information technology." If they really want to know, I'll tell them about the decade as a wilderness guide. Some jobs are vocations, some are avocations, but that one was an evocation. I also wrangle pixels and try to herd them into representations of coherent thoughts, which is a provocation. :-)
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. C.S. Lewis With the waning of interest in professional football it has been suggested that the oddsmakers could recoup their losses by taking bets on who the next celebrity … More Gentlemen
The weather finally feels right for the time of year, but it’s a little confusing. August felt like September, and then in October we had more of the June weather that should have come in July. It’s November now, but just a few days ago the frogs were croaking in our frog pond and the … More Like Thanksgiving
The amount of information available today can be confusing. It is intimidating to some, and overwhelming to others. The newspaper we hold in our hands is almost archaic in a world that clicks, pokes and swipes, heads down, shoulders slumped, eyes glazed – constantly connected in an endless search for stimulation and distraction. Everything that … More Curators
The screen door slams at the back door of our old family home. It has a distinctive sound. No other screen door sounds quite like it, and when I hear it I travel through time. It is summer and my mother is carrying a load of wash to hang out on the clothesline. My dad … More All Hands on Deck
Some of my favorite memories are October memories. I remember Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin (which we still watch every year), dressing up like Batman to beg the neighbors for candy and jumping into big piles of leaves. Caramel apples, kettle corn and hot chocolate on frosty mornings take me back to the kind … More A Picture is Worth a Thousand Rounds
It was my intention this week to write about gun violence in America and how it is a failure of our culture, not our legal system. I wanted to write about how we are inundated by violent images from an early age, yet our understanding of the issue is no more sophisticated than the teenager … More Shift
Our intention this week is that we should expand our comfort zones and step outside the boxes we draw around our thinking. Laugh, if you can, whenever you can. Not the derisive laughter of the playground, but with humility. Laughter is good for the circulation, and it diminishes self-importance. If you can’t laugh, then we … More The Worrier Code
Yesterday I threw away an unrepairable pressure washer which stopped working after only half a dozen uses. The electric motor burned out. (A replacement motor, had I been willing to wait 4-6 weeks for delivery, would have cost almost as much as the original washer.) Of course, the warranty had expired. It was a … More Quality Costs More – If You Can Find It
I once had a boss who was wise, and I sought his counsel on how to deal with an employee who was the antithesis of wise. “Don,” he said, “Over the years I’ve learned that most people don’t wake up in the morning intending to do ill.” That stuck with me, and it has been … More Well Played
We are often skeptical of some of the narratives promoted by mainstream media and bounced around the echo chambers of social media. A recurrent theme in our discussions here has been the negative bias of news reporting as well as the exaggeration, embellishment and spin practiced by many professional talkers. There are some media-perpetuated myths … More Remember This
Outside The Box 