Posts

The Plague-Ground – Yanqui Stay Home

This week, the European Union will ban Americans from traveling there. Why? Because America is the worst country on earth in stopping COVID-19 – and is only getting worse. When Europe opens its borders on Wednesday, the citizens of 11…

The Plague-Ground – Plants Have Ears Too

This week in Barcelona, a string quartet played to a full house of plants. The 10-minute concert was put on to reinforce how important art, music and nature are as life opens again across Europe. It was a weird and brilliant idea to give…

The Plague-Ground – It’s an “and-and” thing.

Toronto is one of the last places in North America still largely closed by the pandemic. Good. Because saving our lives or saving our economy isn’t an ‘either-or’ thing, though we seem hard-wired to think that way. And lord knows,…

The Plague-Ground – A New Kind of Political Leader

One million fewer people live in New Zealand than in the Greater Toronto Area. Yet as of last night, New Zealand has 1,504 cases of COVID-19 and 22 deaths. The GTA meanwhile has 10,726 cases and 801 deaths. Just as New Zealand’s success…

The Plague-Ground – What part of “now” don’t you understand?

The awful news out of our long-term care homes punctures whatever myth of exceptionalism we held about ourselves. It will be harder to claim: “We’re better than that” when cockroach infestations are a feature of how we care for the…

The Plague-Ground – It is solved by walking

My wife Jean and I once trekked 1,000 miles on the Appalachian Trail. It took us three months with our 45 lb. packs strapped to our backs as we slogged our way up and down the peaks of North America’s oldest mountains from Georgia to West…

The Plague-Ground – Librarians are first-responders

No other public library system in the world is bigger and busier than Toronto’s. Not New York. Not London. Us. Nearly 70 per cent of Torontonians use the Toronto Public Library. During the pandemic, with every one of its 100 branches…

The Plague-Ground – Are you rich?

I’ve always wanted to write a fund-raising appeal that starts with that question. You have money. We need money. Give it to us. Please. What this lacks in subtlety it makes up in reality: rich people have more of the very thing you need…

The Plague-Ground – Travel to a new world. No cost. No waiting. Satisfaction guaranteed.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to spend a day exploring a part of the world that billions of us visit every day, that’s completely transformed pretty much everything in our lives – and didn’t exist until 1990. That place…

The Plague-Ground – Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length

When I was half my age, I used to believe that idea from Robert Frost. Now, I’m more into the “in length” part of life’s cycle. But I was reminded twice yesterday how the world can change long before it enters us. I was on the…