I went to Mary Poppins Returns last night (yes, for New Year's Eve.) I quite liked it overall. Basically, that's about as violent as I like my films to ever be (i.e., with zero violence, and almost no threat of peril, either.) I could go on about the good song and dance numbers, or the sweetness of Lin-Manual Miranda, or how good *all* the actors ( Read more... )

Yesterday I went out for a beer in downtown Toronto. It is a strange thing to zap myself magically into another country for a day, but for the next three years, maybe more, I am going to be commuting to Toronto once a quarter ( Read more... )

Yesterday I got up at 5:30 AM to drive to Boston for a day of continuing education. I got lucky and it was cloudy - sometimes driving east two hours into the rising sun can be a problem for me ( Read more... )

My friend Wayne Turner died this week. I saw him on the day he died; he was chipper and friendly, the soul of kindness. In fact, I saw him in church and he was specifically called out from the pulpit for being a stalwart force for good in our lives. Yes, that's right, his minister commended him for his goodness in front of his friends on the day he ( Read more... )

One of the things that is weird about my Small Town is that we seem to be a sort of Jimmy Stewart version of America. History plays out across our canvas as if we're all living a Forest Gump life. Last night, for example, I met the current Nobel Peace Prize recipient, a famous singer, and my former congressman at an event. During the course of the ( Read more... )

Yesterday the town cut down a tree nextdoor. They arrived at 7 AM to start chopping, so I wasn't too surprised when I heard a chainsaw going outside my bedroom this morning before 8 AM. I was actually still in bed when it started, but about to get up and I didn't particularly notice or mind ( Read more... )

There was just a fairly horrible tiff in our town council that I'm not going to get into, but one of the old men speaking up on the local issue asked something in the context of making sure the needs were met for the non-white people in our community. I presume he meant people who were African-American or Latinx, based on the context. He referred ( Read more... )

When I moved my office to the office building on Main Street I got a P. O. box at the post office across the street. I generally sent my assistant there every day ( Read more... )

Either the rats knocked over my compost bin, or a bear did. I am not sure which horrifies me more ( Read more... )

I've been on the fence - tending towards against it - for a long time, but I think it's starting to be the actual answer ( Read more... )