Soundings @jwbarker - Tumblr Blog

Today marks my dad’s birthday. If he was still alive he’d be 107, an unlikely, but not inconceivable possibility. As it was, he died at the

On Aug. 3, 1914, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey uttered his most famous quote on the very eve of the First World War: “The lamps

John Lennon wrote the opening and closing sections of “A Day in the Life”, the final track of the Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely

On Nov. 10, 2020, I posted a YouTube video on Facebook of Billy Joel’s song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with the comment, “For all intents a

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address of March 4, 1933 said, “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whol

The word Advent, as derived from the Latin word adventus, means “coming” or “arrival.” Adventus is in turn the Latin translation of the Gree

With two gobbler feasts in 28 days in 2024, it’s at least a small blessing for holiday diners enjoying their bountiful feasts that turkey pr

Today is the day. Again. Named suspects come-and-go or rise-and-fall, in terms of public speculation over America’s most talked about unsolv

I recently stumbled across an old but interesting piece written for The New Republic more than 25 years ago by Andrew Sullivan, a former edi

It has now been more than 43 years since I lived in the Boston area but Boston stays with you forever. I lived in West Somerville, near Powd

Today marks my dad’s birthday. If he was still alive he’d be 105, an unlikely, but not inconceivable possibility. As it was, he died at the

The governing council of the University College of the North (UCN) approved a final 2024-25 budget April 25 that “will result in a deficit o

Is today’s partial 38 per cent solar eclipse over Thompson, Manitoba, under clear blue skies and balmy 16°C temperatures (the normal April 8

With the death of former prime minister Brian Mulroney today, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent Jan. 11, and Flora MacDonald in 2015, at 89, Jo

“When I was your age” – “when I was a kid, we used to walk through snowdrifts eight feet high just to get to the woodshed.” At which the tai

While he wasn’t much fond of politicians of any stripe collectively, my dad he did have a bit of a liking individually for Mike Starr, Oshaw

Four very long years, indeed. Now, make mine, a “sinful servant” of the Church Militant on Earth, a Smoking Bishop, a mulled wine wassail, t

Soundings