Lemurian Congress

At the end of the 1948 movie " The Snake Pit ," our newly-sane heroine tells her heroic doctor that she knows she has recovered he...

I rarely throw down a book in disgust, but after twenty pages of "You Had To Be There" by Robert Collins I feel like tossing it in...

If I hadn't gone out to find a new cat companion, I would probably be in an agony of depression right now. Instead I'm in an agony o...

In January I read an extremely positive review of Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction in a 1930s New Yorker magazine. Unable to find any of ...

I read a glowing review of an early Elizabeth Bowen short story collection in a 1930s New Yorker magazine, so I picked up one of her well-r...

I'm reading " Lost Country Life " by Dorothy Hartley , based around Thomas Tusser's famous 16th century farming calendar....

Last week a Grade 12 student asked me to write a mini-essay about "homophobia," so she could read it to her class as part of a pro...

I'm reading a biography of Helen Keller in the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, and it lead me to this contemporary newsreel fi...

On Thursday night I watched the rehearsal for " 60 Dances in 60 Minutes ," which will be performed at The Registry Theatre on Nov...

Hey, I'm older than I look (I hope!) Somehow I can't handle a full week of Open Ears concerts while still holding down my 9-5 job. S...

Twenty guests arrive at a posh dinner party, from which the servants have mysteriously vacated. After eating, they retire to the music room,...

I've just watched an amazing documentary called " The Gods of Times Square ." For five years prior to 1994, a guy named Richar...

It's time, I think, for an update! First of all, there are some new pictures on Flickr , including the one above, which serves a few pur...

I really don't mind taking the Greyhound. I'm always stressed about arriving on time, and I'll never understand their "don...

Here's "Ceres" by Harrison Dowd, from the April 20, 1929 issue of The New Yorker. I have honestly never seen these "pigeo...

I first heard about Morley Callaghan while reading Carolyn Strange's mostly-dire "Toronto's Girl Problem." She presented...

Literary modernism had to arrive in the prairie provinces sometime. In 1925 it struck with a bang in the form of Martha Ostenso's class...

Recently I mentioned an interesting Facebook phenomenon , wherein I receive "friend" requests from totally unknown men from far-of...

To end my obsessive re-reading of classic computer literature I tossed in Douglas Hofstadter's " I Am A Strange Loop ," which ...

While the Victorians loved their Freud, the '20s were all about behaviourism and personality tests...everybody was taking quizzes and us...