LONDON, ONTARIO – I’ve been reading books (and knocking back films) by and about the Brontes for most of my life now. What follows is a montage of commentaries and snippets about this fascinating family that I’ve made along the way.

LONDON, ONTARIO – Seventeen year-old Nigel Mawson was drifting his way through an unrealized summer; struggling to find ways to pass the time in the ghost town that his daily life had become. He’d never experienced so barren a summer. Where had everybody gone? He was the only kid left at home as his older brothers had landed jobs as a groundskeeper and a busboy at the same Northern Ontario lodge. And all of his friends who mattered the most – no longer content to just hang out at the pool or devote entire weeks to Monopoly tournaments or loafing and spinning records – had shrewdly planned ahead to acquire semi-serious seasonal jobs.

A SLIGHTLY amended version of this essay – with more pictures! – was featured at Quillette on July 2, 2022 with the title The Opposite of Junk.

LONDON, ONTARIO – Though I didn’t plan it this way, I have long enjoyed a rather handy numerical symmetry in my life. Whenever a birthday comes along which is distinguished by a zero or a five for its second digit – as will happen later this month when I achieve the full Biblical allotment of seventy – then I know that come November and December, I will also be marking significant anniversaries for occupancy in this home (our fortieth) and marriage to my favourite human being (our forty-fifth). Two of our three babies were born in this house, and all of them were raised to an approximation of adulthood here and shared precious space with a succession of four superb dogs and one so-so cat. (Not Una’s fault. She couldn’t help it if her species is dull.)

LONDON, ONTARIO – I was sickened to learn yesterday about the on-stage attack on author Salman Rushdie by a knife-wielding Muslim hothead at the Chautaugua Institute in upstate New York where, ironically enough, the Bombay-born author had just begun a presentation in which he was going to talk “about the United States as a sanctuary for exiled authors and a home for freedom of expression.” It was estimated that he received more than a dozen stab wounds in the horrific assault. A medical report late in the day said he was expected to live even though he was hooked up to a ventilator, his liver was badly damaged and it was pretty well certain that he would lose an eye.