So, after some months in our Canadian home, we’re back in Africa. The commute over the Atlantic was non-eventful with the exception of two notes. One is the passing of Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and so-called “poet-laureate of medicine,” a man rich in words and spirit, both. I saw the report on the BBC somewhere […]
We’re back in Africa. With the cats. (And that Very Great Cat.) Read More »
We’re on a front porch in Sewickley, PA, an idyllic place of mature trees and century homes, a town as similar to Dundas, Ontario as you might imagine, here on the edge of Pittsburgh, a city you’d also be forgiven for confusing with Hamilton. Both have that rugged steel history around a fine waterfront and remarkable
A porch (or two) with a view Read More »
The best time to talk to your nine-year-old boy about women’s plumbing and these sorts of sexually delicate territories is when he’s asleep. This is what every trying father discovers after said boy lays splayed on the living room floor pretending he’s having a baby. Yes, my son Jon was in obvious pain – it seems no epidural
Sexually delicate territories Read More »
He’s a father I’ve known for some years, a lawyer, a father of two boys and two girls. On his way out, leaving for good, he handed me a book I had once lent him – Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner. I said no, keep it as a gift, please, let me sign it for you. I
She was Swiss and she stood at the front door this morning and told me how envious she was of my family’s set-up at the university compound we call home. I nodded. She had just driven the hour from her house in Kampala to drop off her daughter to play with Hannah when we talked
On being a kid, terrorism, and other fears Read More »
Some days I wish I was more musical, at least as musical as the rest of the family. I think the dog wishes the same for himself. Sensing this, yesterday I let Zack listen to Handel on my i-pod. It was Handel’s Concerti Grossi Op 3. I held the buds in his big German Shepherd dog ears. He
The music of my life Read More »
It was last evening. “Dad,” she said. “Can I hold the leash?” “No.” “Please,” she said. “No.” Zack, our big-as-a house German Shepherd, has been a little disobedient on his walks lately, chasing the monkeys and whatnot. Liz wouldn’t be able to hold him. “Zack has given even Mum a hard time lately,” I said. “You
Big dogs, trouble, and the Balm of Gilead Read More »
“Daddy, it’s The Giver!” Liz said when we found the DVD for a thousand shillings, about 40 Canadian cents, at a hole-in-the-wall movie stand across the road from the edge of the university. At home, we saw it even worked, never a guarantee with these sorts of Ugandan movie outlets. For those not familiar with
“If you can’t feel, what’s the point?” Read More »
