Tag Archive "mark-pavilons"

Fate, choice, destiny or divine intervention?

People have said that we can control our destiny, but not our fate. Even Napoleon believed there is no such things as accidents, calling them “fate misnamed.” Terry Pratchett once said that most gods throw dice, but “Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.” Nice analogy.

Losing a friend, a piece of ourselves

Our home is a bit quieter than usual. It’s a strange silence, where you know something isn’t right. Our 14-year-old Lab Marley is no longer with us. For dogs, that’s a heck of a life, roughly equivalent to 98 human years! We don’t really “own” our best friends but merely “rent” them. We all hope for a long “lease.”

Grocery ‘games’ continue to baffle public

George Bernard Shaw once said “there is no love sincerer than the love of food.” While George was spot on regarding our taste buds, he never faced paying $7 for a pound of butter. “Give us this day our daily bread …” the prayer goes. But God never ventured into a grocery store.

We need to be leery of human stupidity

“Never underestimate the power of stupidity,” Robert Heinlein once warned. Martin Luther King, Jr. contended that “nothing in the all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” And the late, great Stephen Hawking said we are destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.

Necessity driving Canadians’ habits

Necessity has been called the “mother of invention,” and a host of other catchy terms. But we are all realizing – all too well – just how necessity is fitting into our current lifestyles.

Rewriting my ever-changing guide book

It’s been a while since I put pen to paper with my inner-most thoughts. I typically have a keyboard – virtual or physical – at my disposal for these things. It’s not always easy to come up with new, informative and enjoyable subjects for my weekly rants. But I try.

Staying connected to the ‘great mystery’

I recently urged my son to apply his somewhat green thumb to growing mushrooms. Not your basic fungi, but those thousand-dollar specimens sought by fancy restaurants. Truffles can cost upwards of several thousand per pound. That’s what I’m talking about! How hard can it be to raise and sell a fistful of these beauties? Turns out, very hard. But as they say, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. It seems my boy is under pressure – to get active, busy and earn money. After all we westerners believe that generating wealth is some sort of gauge of people.

Dishing out failing grades to start the year

My cheeks, squirrel-like with an overabundance of cheese balls, marked my feelings ushering in the new year – tasty at first, yet ultimately unsatisfying. Attached to the couch, I searched for pearls of wisdom from old sit-coms like Frasier, The Big Bang Theory and Last Man Standing. Modern-day sages to be sure. Yet, my grasping at such TV snippet straws proved fruitless.

Internet habits reveal humankind’s weaknesses

It’s been said for generations that you are what you eat. Unfortunately, our North American diet is sadly lacking in nutrition and is laden with chemicals and substances not found on the periodic table. We’ve known about this for some time and in the last decade, there’s been a bit of a revolt, or resurgence in a more balanced diet and lifestyle. But of course, that comes with a cost and since most of us are keenly aware of the rising costs of food, our perfect choices may have to be curtailed.

Curiosity is one of our best qualities

Our lives are filled with questions yet ultimately, few answers. Sure, we make it through our lives the hard way – by making mistakes and discovering the answers ourselves. Few are given to us in advance. There are seldom any shortcuts, cheats or hacks along the way. And writing notes on your arm won’t do in this test of life.

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