Cities

I enjoy exploring towns and cities and this year we spent a month in Paris and Strasbourg. Sadly, I always expect to see some level of homelessness. However, I wasn’t ready for the number of little encampments that I saw in France this year. Tents and cardboard shelters near the Louvre, in shopping arcades, just […]

Have you missed me? I have just finished a four-week trip to  Paris and Strasbourg. I started to write this newsletter three or four days ago in Strasbourg. At the outset, I meant to discuss the disgusting invasion of Ukraine by the gangster, Vladimir Putin. But, for such a difficult topic I need to be […]

I have lamented global responses to COVID-19’s Omicron tidal wave. Criticism is easy, suggesting other strategies more difficult. However, I did commit to putting forward ideas to turn chaos into order.  Crisis management is always political Short term crisis management generally works to the political advantage of the governing party. The crisis creates opportunity to […]

The Oxford Learners’ Dictionary defines chaos in five words – a complete lack of order.  Well, a complete lack of order defines global Covid-19 responses. The scrambled reactions to the Omicron surge do not leave many world governments looking good.  Confusion I don’t know what signals your governments sent you when the Omicron variant emerged. […]

We are staying! That is the short answer to the question in The Fairest of the Seasons : “I want to know do I stay or do I go And maybe try another time” We are staying! It was a tough decision. I didn’t like the thought of the quarantine time waiting for PCR test […]

The dreaded Covid test! I had gone twenty months without being tested. Then I made the decision to accompany my sister to Houston for her 87th birthday and that of her twin, our brother, who lives there.  Different Tests: One kind of test to board a plane from Canada to the US – C$80 each […]

I am in a rut. Not a deep, dark depression but just a little, muddy hole that I am finding difficult to escape.  The First Eighteen Months of Covid I thought that I was managing the restrictions of COVID 19 pretty well. I had found a new pass time – writing! New clients and new […]

Québec has municipal elections on a set date every four years. Candidate campaigns are now in full swing with voting scheduled for November 7. Items high on the agendas in most municipalities – housing and population density. Focus Pointe-Claire I live in Pointe-Claire, an on-island suburb of Montréal. It has a lot going for it […]

It has been too long! The last time I posted a newsletter was just before the Canadian general election. I told you that I had voted for the New Democratic Party (“NDP”).  Well, the election has come and gone. The make-up of the House of Commons hasn’t really changed. The Liberal Party of Canada and […]

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term  “Third Place” in 1989. He defined home as the First Place and “the office / factory floor/ etc” the Second Place. Oldenburg’s Third Places were neither home space nor work space. Boundaries between work, home, and play fade Since 1989, information and communication technologies have helped fade the boundaries […]