Dot Dot Dot · Page 15

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Some books that impressed (or at least really entertained) me over the last year

It’s been a month since New Year’s Day, and while it’s a bit late to add a chip to the pile of year-end retrospectives, I’ve been looking back at books I’ve read over the last year.

In this case, I wanted to look at books that made an impression on me. I hesitate to describe them all as great books; rather, they’re books that I enjoyed, or appreciated deeply.

Looking back over my Goodreads list for the year, I see a few books with details I scarcely remember.

The ones below, though, are generally at the other end of the spectrum: I not only recall them, but remember that satisfaction that comes when you read something hearty. I’m also tossing in some books that were just plain fun.

Here are some recommendations, in no particular order:

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Saturday, January 31, 2026

Tags: Catherine O'Hara, Comedy, John Candy, Movies, Obituaries, Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and Television.

Catherine O’Hara helped get me through high school

I reacted with disbelief yesterday afternoon when I saw the first push notification that Catherine O’Hara had died, at only 71. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” I uttered as I opened the story.

It says something that international media (the BBC, the New York Times, CNN) all saw fit to send push notifications about O’Hara’s death. She had been a Canadian star for almost five decades, but she made an impression — time and again, through a long and wonderful career — everywhere.

SCTV was a fixture for me when I was an adolescent. Produced first on a shoestring in Toronto, the show was kept alive by ITV in Edmonton, where the cast and crew remained to shoot the show through a rocky financing history, even when NBC bailed out and upgraded the show as a complement to the much-better-known Saturday Night Live.

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Saturday, January 31, 2026

Tags: Comedy, History, Politics, Quotations, San Diego, and Travel.

A thought on making your own luck

“I’ve always been in the right place and time. Of course, I steered myself there.”
— Bob Hope

This quote, taken from comedian Bob Hope’s memoir Don’t Shoot, It’s Always Me, speaks to working hard and keeping your eyes out for a good opportunity. Making your own luck, as it were.

I took this photo — of a bronze sculpture of Hope performing in front of an old-timey microphone — in San Diego during a visit there in 2011. It’s a city filled with public art, and there is also a huge navy presence, so it was not surprising to see both combine in a war memorial. You can find it near the USS Midway Museum.

A National Salute to Bob Hope and the Military

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Friday, January 30, 2026

Tags: Music, Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, and Tunes.

You started this fire down in my soul

Last week, the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra achieved a key performing goal — putting bums in seats — with three consecutive Winter Pops concerts at the Arts & Culture Centre in St. John’s.

It was 70s night. Cynically, I’m tempted to say it described the audience … but I’m going to park the cynicism, even though, well, I’m not wrong. (I felt like I was in the younger part of the demographic, honest.)

Powerhouse singer Dana Parsons was at the mic for many of these tunes, including the Thelma Houston barnburner that opened the show.

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Friday, January 30, 2026

Tags: Health, Health care, Newfoundland and Labrador, Paradise, Politics, and St. John's.

Crossed out: About the cancelled hospital at Kenmount Crossing

Taking all the politics and curious real estate backstory out of it, the proposed site for a new hospital in the St. John’s area made sense.

Kenmount Crossing, as it’s called, nears the end of Kenmount Road in St. John’s — or it could be at the beginning, if you’re driving into the city. Three decades or so ago, when I lived in Paradise, all of that land was the woods, the trees you drove past as you went to work or the movies.

It’s all getting filled in now, and the land is between rapidly growing subdivisions from each direction, with industrial and commercial development thrown in there too. The proposed hospital site would have linked to the Trans-Canada Highway through the Outer Ring Road, and would put acute health care much closer to a bigger and growing population.

The new Progressive Conservative government has put the kibosh on the hospital plan. Health Minister Barry Petten on Wednesday said the government simply cannot afford the pricey $10-bilion bill of developing a new hospital from scratch, and will instead renovate St. Clare’s Hospital near downtown St. John’s.

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Friday, January 30, 2026

Tags: Books, Magazines, Quotations, Television, and Writing.

A thought about magazines, the gateway to something heavier

“Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded as the heavy petting of literature.”
— Fran Lebowitz

The quote of today comes from Fran Lebowitz’s debut book Metropolitan Life, which established her in 1978 as a great wit and a barbed observer of how people live their lives. I read it a few years later in university, as well as her followup, Social Studies, and then I waited and waited (and waited some more) for the next collection of essays. Apart from an anthology that combined the two, she has not yet written it.

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Music, Politics, and Tunes.

Tune | A rapid response to Minneapolis, from Bruce Springsteen

In June 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released a searing single called Ohio, just a few weeks after the shootings in Kent State, when the National Guard opened fire and killed students. “Four dead in Ohio,” as Neil Young’s lyrics put it.

It was a fast response to a horrifying news event.

On Wednesday, Bruce Springsteen released Streets of Minneapolis, just four days after Border Patrol offices shot and killed Alex Pretti, who was using a phone to record ICE activity in the city.

Springsteen won an Oscar for the similarly named Streets of Philadelphia, which helped force reluctant fans to confront the reality and ravages of the AIDS epidemic.

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

Tags: Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Politics, Signal Hill, and St. John's.

Should MUN ever have taken on the GEO Centre?

When the philanthropist and businessman Paul Johnson died in 2015, he left behind a mighty physical legacy, especially in the St. John’s area.

Now, one of his favourite projects is in doubt, as Newfoundland and Labrador’s only university grapples with a financial crisis, declining enrolment and other infrastructure badly in need of repair.

Through the Johnson Family Foundation, Johnson spearheaded a number of projects close to his heart. The Grand Concourse, which upgraded and extended a network of walking trails throughout the city, is one of the most obvious. It’s an amazing thing: you can walk from the most easterly points of Canada’s most easterly city for hours and hours and not repeat a step.

Johnson kept a low public profile during his life. I talked with him only once; when we were introduced earlier that evening (it was at a fundraiser), he was so quiet that it took me a minute or three to clock that I was standing next to the Paul Johnson.

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

Tags: Quotations, Science, and Television.

A thought on passing the torch

“Science is a co-operative enterprise, spanning the generations. It’s the passing of a torch from teacher, to student, to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson remains a voice of clarity in a weird time. We live in a time when expertise is now often dismissed; when attaining knowledge is confused with “doing my own research” and ignoring science in favour of comforting beliefs.

Tyson inherited the mantle of Carl Sagan when the groundbreaking series Cosmos was followed in 2014 by Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Have a peek at this episode.

An heir to Carl Sagan and himself now one of the best-known scientists in the world, Tyson in this video explains why he’s prepared to do things like appear on funny talk shows to help elevate scientific knowledge:

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Tags: Britain, Jazz, London, Music, Pop culture, and Tunes.

The British Museum had lost its charm

I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?

My favourite version of A Foggy Day — a 1937 film tune from George and Ira that was introduced by Fred Astaire — was made about two decades later, by Billie Holiday.

It appears in Songs from Distingue Lovers, a Verve album from 1958, in which the label was hoping for the same sort of American songbook success as it had had with Ella Fitzgerald.

I bought the album when Verve issued it on CD. Part of becoming a mature young adult, I guess. More recently, I bought a fine reproduction on vinyl, and it’s one of the ones I never tire of when I want to read on the couch.

My love of the song may also have been connected to my fascination with London, a city I was so curious about as a kid and yet never got to visit until my 40s. The song’s line about the British Museum losing its charm made sense once I actually visited it: it’s surely impossible for such a thing to happen. The famous glass lattice roof did not exist in Holiday’s time, of course, but it comes to mind when I hear the song.

Holiday died in 1959. She was only 44. Her final years may have been marked by addiction and substance abuse, not to mention persecution by the U.S. federal government, but she also recorded some of her best work.

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Tags: Blogs, Coffee, Design, Digital culture, Dot Dot Dot, Signal Hill, St. John's, and Writing.

Meet the designer

Last year, as I was nursing some ideas about having a digital sandbox of my own, I got in touch with Matthew Hollett. I had not yet met Matthew, but we had some mutual contacts, and a look at his design portfolio was enough to tell me a coffee chat would be worth it.

I wrote to him in August, introduced myself, and told him I was interested in having a website where could I post some things I wanted to write. I mentioned a revived blog, and a possible interest in a Substack, too. That would be fine, he said, but he cautioned he couldn’t take on another project until October or November.

Seeing as I was planning to clew up work around then before I retired in late November, the timetable sounded just fine.

On the Tuesday after my last day in the office, Matthew and I met for the first time at Bannerman Brewing on Duckworth Street in downtown St. John’s. Despite what its name implies, it is a grand place in the morning to get a coffee and have a meeting. I think Matthew and I chatted for a couple of hours that morning, back and forth from the website I had in mind to a whole manner of subjects and mutual enthusiasms. (The photo above by the way is of the two of us, at our latest Bannerman coffee and chat a couple of days ago.)

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Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Tags: Business, Leadership, and Quotations.

A thought on psychological safety and leadership

“You shouldn’t blindly accept a leader’s advice. You’ve got to question leaders on occasion.”
— Richard Branson

The above, which comes from the Virgin founder’s 2011 book, Business Stripped Bare, speaks to something I think many leaders would naturally agree is reasonable … but that they may not be inclined to do. That is, put themselves in situations where others (I don’t want to say subordinates, but let’s be frank) can put a question to them with psychological safety.

I’ve worked with lots of leaders over the years, not just in my own workspaces but also because training assignments have brought me (often briefly but sometimes deeply) into contact with lots of different teams. Many of the leaders I admire are the ones who don’t just welcome questions, but encourage them: it can be about accountability, it can be about better work, it can be about team-building. Poor leaders not only avoid situations where questions can be asked, but where conversations can even start.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Tags: Journalism, Media, Newfoundland and Labrador, Paddy Daly, Politics, Radio, and Recommended reading.

Taking flight from VOCM Valley, and other things in the air today

The snow is coming down in St. John’s this afternoon, and hopefully it’s the fluffy stuff that was predicted, albeit in some volume.

A good time to read and take things in. Here are a few things that have passed my way.

A change at VOCM Valley

VOCM’s flagship call-in show Open Line has for a few generations been one of the prime spots for influence in Newfoundland and Labrador, even as private radio has diminished continent-wide as a presence for audiences and advertisers.

Paddy Daly started his show this morning with news that’s he’s leaving.

I found his choice of words interesting: “I’ve made the decision that I’m resigning.” That language is not reflected, for what its’ worth, in VOCM’s own coverage of the change.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Tags: Training and Travel.

Tell me Y: I’ve been packing up my troubles in my old kit bag

Up until the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent a lot of time on the road. Apart from working as a digital producer with CBC News in St. John’s, I was lucky enough to have another specialty with the company: a trainer. I delivered courses and did other projects (coaching work, development, etc.) with teams across the country.

That meant going on the road for a few stretches, and over the years, I got pretty good at keeping things light. I kept my work stuff in a backpack, and in lieu of a suitcase, I often used this:

My dinner companion tonight. #roadwarrior #traininglife

I called this orange bag my dinner companion, as I would (as I did that evening at Pearson International Airport in Toronto) put it in the opposing seat as I scarfed something down.

I still have the bag, except now it’s my workout companion. It’s the one I tote to the Ches Penney Family Y here in St. John’s, as I can shove everything I need, including my size-14 sneakers, into it.

The orange bag is a great little road warrior. I learned over time to minimize the number of things to take. I became very practical about actual needs, and repeated experiences made me a better travel planner. I’d like to think I was helping with reducing my carbon footprint, although I would argue that COVID turned out to be a much bigger effect. From 2020 onward, I taught more courses than ever, and almost all of them were done virtually and remotely. That’s a conversation for another post.

I still have the same backpack, too, by the way. It carries my notebooks, daytimer and often the laptop I’m using to write posts like this, and some bigger projects I’m dreaming up. You can call that my coffee shop companion…

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Tags: Gardening and Quotations.

A thought on flowers and time

“No one is promised tomorrow. We cherish real flowers more than fake ones because we know they are fleeting.”
—Julie Fratantoni

Today’s quote comes from “your friendly neighborhood neuroscientist” and the author of a Substack I follow called Better Brain. The line above resonated with me. When we can’t clip flowers from our garden, I like to buy a small bunch for my mom, who’s 93, because it cheers her up immensely, and her joy and ease lift my spirits. The flowers don’t last that long, but for several days at least, she remarks on them, and I smile whenever she extends a finger to feel the softness of a petal or leaf.

I’m aiming to post a quote here every day, sometimes with an extra note, detail or history. Track the lot of them here!

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