Category: Living

Dear Fellows of the ‘Essence of Water’,

I hope that you are all well, staying safe and making the Herculean effort — as I am — not to touch your face.  In this time of social distancing, as governments everywhere are taking extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’, I know that we are all affected by this new virus.  Maybe your daily routine has changed.  Maybe your level of general anxiety has peaked.  I know, mine has.  Yet, I cannot help but be glad that we — humanity — are suddenly forced to realize the depth of our interdependencies.  

Continue reading “These Strange Days”

Of course Proust has a more refined set of memories, and indeed a more refined sensory palette, than I have.  He tasted and the world came into being.  I can only breathe.  But still, scents matter.

Continue reading “Madeleines in the oven”

One of my favourite pieces of orchestral music is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  In my early teens, back in the days of vinyl long-playing records, which rotated on the turntable 33 times per minute, I was given a recording which I played regularly.  The music is accessible and exciting, an ideal introduction to the classical tradition.   The work had been written for piano in the 1870s, but fifty years later Maurice Ravel had produced an orchestral adaptation of the score, which was the music I knew.   In 1986, I watched on television as Barry Douglas played the original version in Moscow, on his way to winning the Tchaikovsky Piano Prize.  I still listen to his recording, released the following year.

Continue reading “My Philosophy: On other possibilities”

My initiation into political work occurred when I was twelve.  I spent several hours delivering leaflets for the local Liberal Party candidate who contested the parliamentary seat where I grew up, which in those days was reliably Conservative.  On election day itself I helped collect voter numbers, cycling between several polling stations where other volunteers were keeping tally of those who had promised to vote for ‘our man’, taking this information back to the local committee room, where the agent’s assistant aggregated the data and identified those among our known supporters who had yet to vote.  Other volunteers were dispatched to knock on their doors and remind them to hurry to the polling stations before they closed.  The process was rather amateurish compared with the technology-enabled campaigning of the modern day, but it was also courteous and civic-minded.  ‘Our man’ knew he wouldn’t win, but he sought to secure as many votes as he could, not least because the higher his tally the greater the pressure on the incumbent Member of Parliament to serve his constituents well.

Continue reading “My Philosophy: On how we live”

I had the rare pleasure of an approach pattern into O’Hare today from the west.  I think something like 90% of approaches into O’Hare come from the east, which usually is a good thing because I tend to fly transcontinental via Chicago east to west, and an eastern approach saves time; west to east, I try to go from one coast to the other because it’s usually a red-eye and you want the longest flight possible in order to get something approaching a normal night’s sleep.  East to west, though, it’s probably going to be an end-of-day flight, and all you want is speed and a short layover.  That means you’re going to go through Chicago if you’re a United frequent flyer such as myself.

Continue reading “Logistics”