Section F: From Real Life | I don't give a damn

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Not sure what to say to this

March 2, 2014

After our divorce, my first wife, whom I’m calling “Val” in this blog, married the minister who got me into the ministry back in the late ’70s. He and I had been extremely close since my late teens. A mentor, for sure. He was also popular with my friends, and Ian and I would hitch […]

Little Troubleshooters

January 14, 2014

I know I often come across as a grumbling curmudgeon with little sentimentality — the kind of person who misdirects the blind and refuses to clap for Tinkerbell. But I do have a softer side, and one thing that is guaranteed to bring it out is the sight of a little kid offering to help […]

Thy deep and dreamless sleep

December 25, 2013

It’s Christmas time so I’m reposting something I wrote a few years ago (and then borrowed for a Christmas editorial for the newspaper last year.) Merry Christmas everyone. “I remember standing in the old church in Windsor…” These were the words with which I intended to begin this post. They refer to a specific moment […]

Including the kitchen sink

December 7, 2013

Sadly, one of the best comic strips is disappearing. I’ve been enjoying Cow and Boy for some years now, but apparently its fans are a small and disparate group. Admittedly, it’s not your usual comic strip. It’s about a boy and his cow and mostly they sit around pondering life’s imponderables while dodging cat-copters, hate-bots […]

An ode to The Straight Man

December 3, 2013

Oh sure, we laughed at Lou Costello, Tommy Smothers and Jerry Lewis in their heyday, but we know they wouldn’t have been half so funny without their other halves: Bud Abbott, Dick Smothers and Dean Martin. And Gracie Allen without George Burns? Forget it. But of course, the famous straight men and women of the […]

The raccoon incident

November 18, 2013

This is a piece I wrote while working on that paper that shall remain nameless out west in that province that shall remain equally nameless. It happened last winter and is reported here without embellishment. I guess what I'm saying is: Yes, I'm that stupid.

So … that happened.

October 20, 2013

Okay. I think I can finally talk about this thing. When last I wrote we had just committed to a drastic and frightening life change. (Geeze. Isn’t “life change” a bloodless phrase?) Samantha, her 85-year-old father and I were moving halfway across the country where I would take on a steady and significant position on […]

Little fire on the prairie

October 1, 2012

We chased our first fire engine a few days ago. This turns out to be one of my responsibilities as managing editor of a small town newspaper in the Canadian Prairies. Chasing fire engines. As hard-hitting journalists out for the latest scoop we’re supposed to make sure we’re first on the scene so that we […]

Smoking Guns: #3 — Death comes calling

August 3, 2012

[This is the account of my third “smoking gun.” It is as accurate as I can make it, a process that has included repeated interviews with the principles involved, always following Gibbs Rule Number One: Never question suspects together. Conversations are left out except when the exact words can be confirmed, or the comment was […]