Roxanne Tellier – I’ll Take Mortality for $200 Alex

When did people start ending every conversation with “be safe. Keep yourself safe”? Am I the only one that wonders when it was decided that we are living in a time of war or zombie attacks? And why is it so incredibly sad to know that the enemy we’re being cautioned against is a disease too often spread to us by our own loved ones and ‘friends’?

Peter is Changing How He Sees Things

I want to kick off this week by thanking everyone who reacted to last week’s effort. I hope that I have inspired you, and we here are already starting to plan for our Christmas donations. We are going to be donating to a local cat rescue organization, as an aside. 

For my part, as I am having cataract surgery this week, I will present some random thoughts about the subject.

Chef Tom – Chicken with Mushrooms, High South, and Sam

I made this over the weekend. Man is it good. Rich with the cream, but hey, cream is a whole food, and the natural saturated fat is good for your brain. You need this dish to feed your head, so you can figure out what’s for dessert..

Roxanne Tellier – A Voting We Will Go

ELECTIONS! Whether we want them or not!

But first ….

FACEBOOK!  If you’ve been following my Facebook antics – or lack thereof, as I have sat banished and abandoned in Facebook solitary for the better part of the last six months – I am happy to report that I have been allowed to return to the site. Well, for the moment, anyway. I’m already getting warnings for doing really horrible things like posting links to how to determine if you might be addicted to social media.

Chef Tom – Food Fusion and The Silk Road Ensemble

Not to be confused with CON-fusion. Some ultra-PC folks wax expert about cultural appropriation. Well, the one place where that construct has no business being, is in the kitchen. Every dish you cook has had multiple influences from multiple cultures. Even if I were relegated to only cooking white boy food from Northern California (eeew), there would be zero recipes that I could cook that hadn’t originated from someplace OTHER than my own neighborhood. Even my own neighborhood evolved from countless cultures other than my own.

Fusion is the result of natural evolution, IMHO. The world is one big magical soup. The parable of Stone Soup makes my point. Without the generous influence from the other cultures around us, life would be unbearably dull. 

Peter Gets His Shots, Shares His Library Love, and Reviews a Good Book

Let me start off this week by stating that I have had both COVID vaccinations and will gladly get a booster shot in a couple of months if it is recommended. I have been wearing a mask and practicing social distancing and taking any precautions available to keep myself safe. During my career with the Canadian government, I got my flu shot every year, not only to protect myself, but to protect those whom I interviewed, as well as my family members and friends. 

I posted this comment in response to an article about the virus, and while many people “liked” this comment…..several people “laughed” at it.

Sadly enough there are those out there who minimize the impact of COVID 19 on the world as we know it. They freely post disinformation in the guise of memes and videos, while mocking those who take it rather more seriously.

Roxanne Tellier – The Run Down and the Wrap Up

Ah, dang it. Like death and taxes, unwanted summer electoral politics are inescapable.  Rumour has it that our PM Justin Trudeau is determined to call a snap election, reportedly to be held on September 20^th. Why? Because he believes that doing so at this time will ensure his party can win a majority government, allowing him to avoid what he has been calling “opposition obstruction.” 

Roxanne Tellier – Up Up and Away

There was an interesting article in the New York Times last week that talked about a phenomenon known as ‘collective effervescence.’ This term describes the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group in a shared experience. That could be anything from a gathering of friends in a restaurant, to the frenzy of wedding guests doing a line dance in synchrony, to the sort of nationalistic madness seen in Little Italy or Little Portugal when their country’s team wins the World Cup.

Roxanne Tellier – Smile Damnit. Smile!

To be honest, I haven’t much enjoyed the last five years or so. I’m not just talking about politics, though, if there was ever a time in which it became apparent how much politics affects every aspect of our every day lives, this was that time. 

Roxanne Tellier – What a Difference a Year Makes

On January 25^th, 2020, a Toronto man returning from Wuhan, China was the first presumptive COVID-19 case in Canada. By March, with the disease raging across Canada, the World Health Organization had declared COVID a pandemic, the NBA, NHL and most other sport leagues had suspended their seasons, while the Olympics were officially postponed to 2021, the Juno Awards were cancelled, Parliament went on break, and schools began to close from coast to coast.