Welcome to Everything

In two days I am off to Seattle to see Tessie graduate with her Masters degree. This is astonishing to me, as it seems only two weeks ago she was a shy little thing hiding behind her mother's skirts when being introduced. I'm so proud of her. She's dealt with the loss of her mother to cancer and the trauma of being basically kidnapped up to Washington state. She lost her grandfather and the love of her aunt and yet leapt over all these

Secret Origins: Another Summer Festival?

A week or so ago, I walked through the downtown park that hosts most of the summer festivals for which London, Ontario, has become noted. Sunfest, Children's Festival, Home County Folk Fest (alas, a casualty of COVID, killed after 50 years, though perhaps ready to return to life in '25), Ribfest, Bluesfest... I've lost track, and felt surprise when I saw a gathering of food trucks and some minor banners as I neared the park's

"I came, I saw, and God won."

- Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, paraphrasing Julius Caesar in describing
his overwhelming victory at against the Protestants at the Battle of Mühlberg, April 1547.

"Sangallo...has departed from the truth. That this is so, anyone with an unimpassioned eye can see....Sangallo...takes away all the light...leaving so many dark, lurking places above and below that they

"The x day of July...ther ded in London mony marchants and grett ryche men and women, and yonge men and old, of the new swett."

- From the diary of English merchant Henry Machyn,
recording the arrival of the English Sweating Sickness in London, July 1551.

"Both victor and vanquished
are but drops of dew -
but bolts of lightning –
thus should we view the world.