1. In Freiburg im Breisgau, in southwest Germany, two tall silent men clear the dishes from the guest tables in the Hotel am Rathaus breakfast room. The men bend forward from the waist before each table and their strong fingers are gentle with the delicate porcelain cups and... [Read more...]
I was researching information for a guidebook on Belize with my husband John and my friend Joy. John is the nervous type who gets sick for protection while Joy will do anything on the travel trail and doesn’t have a nervous cell in her body. During our explorations, we went... [Read more...]
William was the son of George Gascoigne, 1537-1577. George mentioned William in his only well-known poem, “Lullaby,” published in 1573 when William was 8 years old. William is “Robyn” in the poem because George published anonymously and used fictional names and initials... [Read more...]
Newest Articles
Poet and Son: William GascoigneThe second of John Harris’s series “Poet and Son” is about George and William Gascoigne.
The Swimming HoleGeorge Bowering goes down to the ol’ swimming hole.
Poet and Son: Lewis ChaucerThe first of John Harris’s series-in-progress, “Poet and Son,” is about Geoffrey and Lewis Chaucer.
Thinking Television: Tales of Media and CommunicationNorbert Ruebsaat’s media students from around the world tell him how they watch television.
It’s the End of the Semester… as we know itStan Persky looks at the 2012-13 teaching season. Everything from “real education” to MOOCs and the Virtual U.
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Travel Journal: Freiburg im BreisgauNorbert Ruebsaat looks at, listens to, and tastes Freiburg, Germany, where the language borders subtly shift..
Chicken Bingo — BelizeThe rooster has pooped. It’s chicken bingo time in Belize with feisty explorers and an under-the-weather hubby. Vivien Lougheed explains all.
Language and Silence, or, Just Shut the Fook UpTim Parks travels to the end of his mind in search of a little peace and quiet.
The Mother-in-Law JokeStephen Marche thinks it’s the Golden Age of reading and writing. Howard Jacobson thinks readers are disappearing and fiction is “fooked” (as they say in England). Stan Persky investigates.
When Atoms CollideStephen Greenblatt tells the story of a Renaissance book-hunter’s trip to the library. Stan Persky looks at Greenblatt’s “The Swerve” and the pushback from its critics.
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Post-MortemAn ancient ritual performed by a venerable and often stoned priestess, sybil or oracle, usually involving the entrails of a hapless deceased animal, to explain an unexpected event. E.g., the British Columbia provincial election of May 14, 2013. Pollsters, pundits and prophets unanimously predicted that NDP leader Adrian Dix would be elected the next premier of the resource-rich west coast Canadian province, unseating right-of-centre Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark. The pontificating classes had the NDP ahead by as much as 20 points going into the election, and leading by somewhere between 6 and 9 points right up to election day.
Instead, Clark won a comfortable majority, taking 50 of 85 seats, pretty much the same result as in the 2009 and 2005 elections. Social Democrats, weeping into their beer and lattes, could take only minor comfort in the small glitch of Clark losing her Vancouver-Point Gray seat to NDP up-and-comer Dave Eby. The NDP again forms the official opposition, with 33 seats. The first elected Green Party MLA and one independent round out the legislative complement. Only about half the eligible voters cast a ballot (again, not much different from previous elections), prompting one wag to quip about the much-vaunted impact of social media on politics, “There were more Tweets than votes.” The Liberals won by a sizeable 5 percentage points, 44 per cent to 39 per cent, just the reverse of the way the pre-election pollsters called it. The pollsters spent the post-mortem dawn tweaking their algorithms.
Meanwhile, the Oracle of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, emerging from a dark lane filled with discarded needles and condoms, explained it all, muttering, as did the winning and losing politicians, “The People, the People. The election belongs to the People.” Maybe the pundits, to echo a famous line by poet Bertolt Brecht, need to elect a new people.
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