journalism

We live with our parents, even when we don’t

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 17, 2016)

ABOARD KLM FLIGHT 535 TO UGANDA ✦ I’ve always envied people who could watch their mothers grow old.

My mother, I’ve shared previously, passed on when I was in kindergarten. I hadn’t seen her for two years prior to that.

Funny to think of it here, half asleep at 40,000 feet.

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The winds of political change blowing hard

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, November 7, 2015)

ISTANBUL, Turkey ✦ This starts in Hamilton where I was driving to my local polling station amidst dead leaves blowing everywhere, as hard as the winds of political change.

It was the first time in 14 years I was around in the fall to see the trees lose their lifeblood, a moment in time, even as we all, after our simple X on a paper put in a cardboard box, watched change blow into Ottawa.

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(More) Turkish Delight (with a magic genie lamp this time)

I’m back in Africa. But let’s go back just a few days. Hey, there’s a guy balancing four wine glasses, full, on top of each other, on his head. Everyone laughs. And cheers. That is one enormous and flat head. This, on an old cobblestone road in front of the Hotel Sultana, an otherwise non-descript

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The Nature of Peace #3 (and BTW, Dad, I’m going to be a journalist!)

Here, or below, we’re continuing on the theme of The Nature of Peace, this the third of several excerpts from an address I gave in Hamilton, Canada in November 2014. Excerpt #1 is here and #2 is here. But first, this brief conversation: Dad: “And, guys, whenever you feel down about school, just remember, you only

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