I quit smoking. I can’t believe that I actually did it, but I did and if I can quit smoking then anyone on this planet can. I wasn’t just a smoker, I was a champion smoker. I was a smoker of “Olympian” proportions. Rothman’s King Size made my entire
This is the column that I thought might finally get me run out of town. I survived the one in the old, printed Herald about calling singer Burl Ives the fat dead guy and the one about death being a great career move for Elvis, but this is the
It is an odd concept “to belong” to something but it is an important one. I am convinced it is a real part of what it is to be human. Most people, but not all, need to belong. A few years ago, I received an email inviting me to
The world is anxious these days over the price of gasoline. What else is new? It has thus been ever so. The world has for some time now been shaped by the price of a barrel of oil. Write all you want about wind power and solar power and
Our clocks moved forward last week. It is a rite of Spring and is always a mini trauma in our households. If your place is like ours the formality of moving the hands of the clocks forward, or backward, actually comes in dribs and drabs. It takes a day
Here I am back now from another trip to the hospital. I have had worse days. The older I get the more time I spend there. That isn’t an amazing fact because I am pushing 80. I have told you before that those who say “age is only a
I am sick and tired of this winter. It is still February and I have had it up to the gills. Weather these days in this rock within the sea sucks. While I was born and raised here, I’m not one to rail on about how dreadful things were
Parents are a funny breed. They mean well and try to set us on the correct path but sometimes the things they teach are just well-meaning garbage.
When my brother John and I were very young, our mom and dad (mostly mom) warned us about the
I love St. John’s in a way that is more than anything else, constant. In some spiritual way, it never changes. It has always been my home except for a brief interval. I loved the city through it all and I love it now and I don’t anticipate ever
It is no small wonder that we Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are as unhealthy as we are. It is the way we were raised and our diet. Our food upbringing was not that good, at least when I grew up. I was reading the other day about the incidences of