2015 Archives – Page 3 of 10

Life is in the small pleasures, the simple moments

(The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday, September 26, 2015)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Our dog, Zak, is a fine-looking German shepherd with a deep bark and a good name. (I mean, if your name is all you can ever fully own, surely that’s true for dogs too.)

He’s wary of strangers and, I suspect, would give his life if called to. He has a funny relationship with his food, never uses his doghouse, (preferring our back door), and loves rolling in the morning dew.

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My son lost his shorts. (But we’re still fine parents.)

1 Comment / Daily Dad / September 24, 2015 / 2015, clothing, humour / satire, our Ugandan home, swimming, Ugandan school life / 3 minutes of reading

So, the boy arrived home from the school this week wearing his swimsuit. He had lost his shorts. And those other shorts, also. Yes, those other shorts. The conversation went like this. “How was your day at school, son?” “I lost my shorts.” “Oh.” “And my underwear too.” “That’s great Jon.” The swimsuit my son

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Simple pleasures

Leave a Comment / Daily Dad / September 19, 2015 / 2015, our Ugandan home, simple pleasures / 2 minutes of reading

It’s Saturday morning in Africa and some of us, jet-lagged, are sleeping in. At least to the extent that’s possible around here. Hannah opens the front door and yells out, “It’s time for breakfast!” She’s yelling to her brother, who is with his best friend, a boy from school who, last night, had his first

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Back to school. Where there is (no) truth to be discovered.

Leave a Comment / Daily Dad / September 11, 2015 / 2015, Manuel Neuer, pluralism, private versus public schools, school life, soccer, tolerance and intolerance, truth, truth and lies / 4 minutes of reading

It’s the other evening and, as we often do, we’re playing soccer on our front lawn – the dog watching, along with the cats, along with African birds in the 40-foot palms. The boy, naturally, likes to show off by putting the ball in the big net in the most creative and dramatic ways he

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We’re back in Africa. With the cats. (And that Very Great Cat.)

Leave a Comment / Daily Dad / September 4, 2015 / 2015, Aslan, humour / satire, morning coffee, Narnia, Oliver Sacks, our Ugandan home, school life / 8 minutes of reading

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

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Of lions, children and innocence of lives given

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / September 4, 2015 / 2015, Aslan, Baraah Fakierah Foundation, Cecil the lion, Chronicles of Narnia, eucastrophe, lions, suffering, war children, Yemen, Yemen’s civil war / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 29, 2015)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ If you were a lion you’d have little in common with any little girl, unless it’s the summer of 2015 when you could both die horrible deaths on the other side of the ocean and people on this side would know.

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Americans need to take back their lives. Go to Washington en masse.

2 Comments / Daily Dad / August 28, 2015 / 2015, Alison Parker and Adam Ward murders, American gun slayings, American values, gun control, guns, marches on Washington, Virginia journalist slayings / 4 minutes of reading

I’m at the Y and it’s the news on TV and the story that will still take some time to play itself out, the one of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the two slain journalists from Virginia, the story that has shocked, at least to the extent that anyone can be shocked anymore. Not that

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Symbols and gold watches and those monsters on the lake

4 Comments / Daily Dad / August 22, 2015 / 2015, Christ's cross, symbols, the cross, the Lake Erie Monster, thievery / 7 minutes of reading

A cross can be quite something, that is wearing a cross as a symbol of one’s love and devotion to the God-Man who hung on one 2000 years ago, and, in doing so, changed the course of history. And yet. + What I didn’t tell you recently, when I told you how my 10-year-old son

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