Category: Thoughts, Musings, Stories

In theatre there is a concept called scene obligatoire. That’s when finally, just towards the climax of the play, the key characters finally meet and have it out. Yesterday and today, in Justice Merchan’s courtroom in New York, was the scene obligatoire we’ve been waiting for: Donald J. Trump and Stormy Daniels in the same…

GritLit is the annual Hamilton literary festival. For years I didn’t go, for a number of reasons, but the most compelling one was that I was busy running Artword Artbar. Well, that’s over now, so now I can go. I was impressed. It was consistently really interesting, the authors smart, their answers candid and to…

We parked the car and headed to Theatre Aquarius to see Beautiful Scars, the Tom Wilson musical. A woman passing by stopped to talk. “You’re one of those Theatre Aquarius types.” (I think it was my new hat.) “You’re going to see Tom Wilson.” I said yes. We chatted. “Tom Wilson is the most honest…

Part 1 My mother told me this story. She and I were on a train. I was about 2 years old. We were probably travelling from Sarnia, where my father had a war job of some sort, to Toronto, where my grandmother lived. I was restless and was standing in the aisle. One row up…

When it started, I thought the interruption would be short. Life would revert. We’d get back to the headlong insanity that we called normal. A year has passed, and that once-vivid world is just another memory. Like university. Like that summer vacation, when you couldn’t wait to go back next year. Like Humphrey Bogart saying…