On my retirement from teaching at Queen’s, I decided to learn to draw. I had tried fitfully, a few times over the years, to master this craft, but had repeatedly given up. This time I decided to stick with it until I either became satisfied with my drawing, quit because it would never be any good, or died: whichever came first. I worked from two excellent, very different books – Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards and Making Comics by Lynda Barry – and from classes with some fine teachers at the Kingston Seniors’ Centre. And it all made me miserable. In the long term, I had no style, context, or ideas about what to do with my drawings once I learned how to draw them. And in the short term, proportion and perspective in particular defeated me. My childishly distorted limbs and skewed horizons

By now you may be fed up with the controversy over Christopher Morris’ play The Runner. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Morris himself were pretty tired of it all. But it’s an important issue – a valuable Canadian play is under attack here – so I hope to add one more bit of info to the discussion: a look at the two open letters written by those who campaigned successfully to cancel two planned productions of the play. It’s too late to do anything about those cancellations now, but it might be of interest, or of use, to look at how those letters misinterpreted the play and helped censor a valuable work of art. The play itself is too strong to be defeated by these two cancellations: further productions are slated for the future, in other venues. But those letters remain on the public record, and deserve to be

We went to see a new play, written by a young woman and featuring a mostly-young cast, plus two actor friends of ours in their 80s. One is a long-time hippie who has enjoyed an adventurous personal life, and the other is a lesbian and anti-racism activist. They are also both notably physically fit, for a pair of octogenarians. However, in the play, they had to hobble about (she, on a walker) as conservative grandparents, baffled and horrified by their grandson’s coming out as gay. You know: old people. We attended an evening of standup comedy by performers who were all under 35. We two were the oldest people in the room by a couple of decades. It was a celebration of diversity: multiple genders, orientations, ethnicities and physical abilities. They had all come together to laugh; to celebrate their differences and similarities; and to make fun of their elders.

On my 11th birthday – the day before Christmas, 1958 – my cousin Morty, also 11 at the time, asked me a question which has remained with me all my life.  We were in Radio City Music Hall, on a family vacation: a week in New York City at Christmastime. We were walking up the aisle after the show, which had featured the Rockettes, the Music Hall’s legendary precision dance company, famous for their long legs and uniform high kicking. Morty was gushing over them. I said I found them cheesy. I have since apologized to Morty for what I said next, and I now apologize to you, gentle reader, but hey, I was 11. I had been in a couple of school plays, so I added – to my lifelong embarrassment – “I happen to know a lot about theatre, and I say the Rockettes are crap.” Morty stopped

I am twelve. I’m in a softball game at my summer camp. I’m playing outfield, because that’s where they put the weakest players, on the very sound premise that the opposing team will seldom hit the ball hard enough for it to get to the outfield where we crappy players can fumble it. A batter on the opposing team hits the ball, the pitcher catches it off a bounce and throws it to the catcher – these guys are, after all, among the better players – and a kid on the opposing team, who was on third base, slides into home plate just as he is tagged by the catcher. The umpire, one of the teenage camp counsellors, calls it: “He’s out!” Immediately, every kid on the opposing team starts yelling, “He’s safe! He’s safe!” And an instant later, every kid on our team, except me, starts yelling, “He’s out!

While starting to write this first blog, I realized that if current trends hold, these blogs will inevitably include reports on the deaths of people who matter to me, our community, and/or the world. So to counterbalance the eulogies to come – and in a spirit of optimism and fresh beginnings, as we launch this website – I’ll start with some excellent news: somewhere, one of the world’s greatest geniuses has recently been born.  Yes, somebody who will make an enormous difference to us all is pooping in a nappy at this very moment. Sorry, can’t tell you who it is, or where – or their gender, culture, ethnicity or socioeconomic background. I don’t know the nature of their great deeds to come. I just know that there is a great savior out there whose chief concern at the moment is to get as much milk as possible out of