Recent Columns

Liz continues to do her best to teach her cats how to do new tricks … and take my underwear in the process. If you missed it in the Hamilton Spectator the other day, here’s the news on all this here or below. + PDF Version (The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 27, 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Back in […]

It was ‘good-bye mommy!’ and ‘good-bye daddy!’ this morning with all the waves and smiles while bus after bus rolled out of the school parking lot. Hundreds of kids went one place or another, this direction and that into the Ugandan countryside – it can be strikingly beautiful – on several class trips. Our own three […]

I don’t know. All this talk about sex and my manhood. It started when this post simply shared our updated family photo and the news that while the Family Dog is now in our annual shot, our family won’t get larger because I’ve had the snip-snip, that is a vasectomy. My Obstetrician Babe gave her […]

We’re around the breakfast table and the kids are bragging about how old they are, that is how mature and experienced and all that. Liz makes the point she’s in Year 7 now, which, in their international school in Uganda actually means high school. The other two aren’t far behind. Which brings the table conversation […]

Finally, to add to what started with this one and complete this trilogy of posts this week on the news that 19 Somalis were just arrested in Kampala for allegedly plotting to blow some unknown place to Kingdom Come, the only other note to add is that one hopes that jails in Uganda are more secure than jails in Yemen. Yemen, of course, is […]

Since it’s fresh on my mind from  yesterday’s note on the Somalis thrown into a Kampala jail for allegedly plotting a terror attack around here, I should add that I’ve had my own experience with a Ugandan jail. To speak with a certain investigating police officer, Joseph, I was once a visitor at a local precinct after my vehicle was […]

So, a bunch of Somalis in a slum not far from here apparently wanted to blow something up, something big if they had it their way, which has happened in this corner of the world before. You’ll recall what happened in Nairobi right around this time last year. (And if you’ve forgotten, read this, how a day of shopping turned […]

We’re at it again, hockey in Africa, and it’s with sadness and regret that I have to report that the other evening the girls, that is Mom and Liz and Hannah, beat the boys, that is Jon and myself, by a lone goal scored in a sort of overtime only because the girls had a FOURTH player […]

We left last time talking about pregnancy and birth and all that, especially at certain universities in Uganda. (Which brings me to this brief conversation between Hannah and Mom at the hospital just before we left Canada recently.) Mom: It was a busy night. We had 11 deliveries. We even had twins. One boy and one girl. […]

A recent conversation with my eldest. Liz: Daddy, do you like my high heels? Me: No. They’ll give you a bad back. Liz: But Daddy, I’m growing up. Me: You’re barely out of the womb. + This brings us to The Cat. Faithful Reader knows enough about this playboy animal. He has a history here in our Ugandan […]

Friends – Today we — My Bride, the children, Yours Truly — are back on a plane to Uganda. (And, as they say, it’s not the destination that counts, but the journey. This is why in my family we don’t really care where exactly the plane may be flying, as long as the movies are all working fine.) […]

It was the last night in my Canadian home. The day, a busy one, the end of a stretching week, was spent keeping some semblance of order, some idea of knowing what, with the dwindling time left, was still most important. I was outside my front door, in the dark, fumbling with my keys, looking for […]

It’s been a mad dash these days to pack up the house – again – for our annual return to Uganda. The plane flies this holiday weekend. One of the cats at our African home – she was a kitten not long ago – has apparently given birth in our absence. We’ve been sent video […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, August 23, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ He needs a home with others. Assisted living. There are options in Hamilton. He needs one before he’s destroyed by his uncertainty and fear, his black as midnight darkness. He’s not a star, not a celebrity, not, say, Robin Williams, whose suicide just shook us so deeply. He’s simply your neighbour. This is his story.

The highlight of the week was seeing a buddy from ye olde boyhood years. I hadn’t seen him for more than three decades. He and his wife came the other evening for dinner. “This is my son, Jon,” I said, at one moment. “And this is my friend …” “Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Jon. “This is your friend […]