August 3, 2022 — Nothing but Blue Skies? Returning after three years to a landscape as familiar as my backyard, all was as it has always been. The Milky Way blanket of stars glittered above as they never do in the city; the same toe-stubbing rocks jutted from irregular slopes…

July 11, 2022 — The Runners I like to run, though this has certainly not always been the case. Shortly after my arrival in Ottawa, over two decades ago now, I was somehow convinced to sign up for the Winterlude triathlon. At the time a part of the city’s annual…

June 18, 2022 — Buildings and More, Gone Missing Like Teeth I haven’t been sleeping well lately, but yesterday the weather was so perfect that I roused myself to do a run at lunchtime. …

June 10, 2022 — Tired, But Practicing the Discipline of Hope Given the number of shots I’ve taken at Doug Ford and his Ontario government over the past couple years, one would think I’d be mired in a deep pit of despair over the recent provincial election, which resulted in…

May 7, 2022 — The Evolving Obsessiveness of a Serial Collector “I’m a collector of beautiful things / I capture and keep them and pin down their wings.” — Daniel Romano, “The Collector” What is it that drives otherwise sane people to seek out, acquire, catalogue, organize, display, store, and…

April 5, 2022 — [Overcoming] “The Cyclical, Maddening Nature of Anxiety” I hope to never get too old or culturally frozen in amber to allow new music to burrow deeply in my head. Already my Best Songs of 2022 playlist has some great candidates — “Hot and Heavy” and “Brando”…

March 15, 2022 — Loosening Restrictions, and Atrocities in Ukraine: Work From Home Week 104, Week 105… Almost unnoticed, the drawing to a close of the workweek last Friday marked a significant milestone: two years away from the office through the COVID-19 pandemic. A full 104 weeks of working remotely…

February 27, 2022 — ‘Convoyage’: Ottawa Made Boring Again When our spirit has been broken / When you’ve cut us to the bone/ When you’ve pushed us down as deep as we can go /Can you leave us alone — James Gordon, “Leave Us Alone” (2005). Right up front, it…

February 6–8, 2022 — “There May Not Be a Policing Solution to this Demonstration” To say that things have gotten weird in my city is a massive understatement. It’s hard to know where to begin on this — day 10 of the massive anti-vaxx…event. “They are terrorizing our residents, torturing…