Words (Page 21)

Some of the articles, stories and columns I have written.

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(2018 March 23) – I have decided. We all love to hate Facebook, and for good reason. It has a warm and fuzzy exterior which is the only thing we usually see. It covers up a dark and sinister underbelly. So I have decided. We all know that Facebook is highly addictive. The fentanyl of social media. I have a habit of falling into some bad habits while avoiding worse ones. So I have decided. We all tend to give Facebook a free pass because of the friendly nature of its public persona. Accepting Facebook because it helps build community is a lot like acceptingRead More →

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Remarks to the Guelph City Council special meeting on the new main library, 13 February 2018. Thank you, Mayor Guthrie and Councillors and staff for the recommendation to endorse the New Main Library Business Case as developed by KPMG and adopted last month by the Guelph Public Library Board. It is very encouraging to see this level of support at this juncture. I hope we are still in this position after the election in October Sometimes it seems like whenever there is a change in city council, or in the upper echelons of city management, or even in the assignment of staff to the BakerRead More →

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December 16 2017 was the centenary of my mother’s birth. She lived from 16 December 1917 until 02 December 2002. I have assembled a few old photographic memories that illustrate her life a little bit. She was always a very strong-willed and determined woman. This lasted her right through to the end when the fog of Alzheimer’s had closed right in, but not entirely. In her final years she could remember every grievance she ever suffered as a child, but almost nothing of what happened yesterday. Her most repetitive topic of conversation was that she wanted to see her mother and her sister again. SheRead More →

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I was looking for something completely unrelated to this particular memory. I know it is somewhere in my home office, possibly in a crowded desk drawer or an even busier bookcase. Maybe it’s near the bottom of a pile of papers in the closet. I don’t know, because I haven’t found it yet. But I will. It’s an old address book my mother kept. A lot of the entries were made when we still lived in England, and that was 60 years ago. Some were made after we came to Canada. I stopped looking for it when I was sidetracked by the discovery of Lynne’sRead More →