“We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.” — Sandra Day O’Connor
The U.S. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the majority decision in the 2004 case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The decision came when an American president was under fire for war in the Middle East, and citizens were furious with a government accused of ignoring due process for citizens.
Winter is a good time to read. Can’t get around much anymore, to tweak the Duke Ellington standard.
I always love seeing people’s reading suggestions (my want-to-read list is hellaciously long), and I thought it might be helpful to recap quickly some of the books I’ve read or more likely listened to in the first weeks of the year. I keep track of these things over at Goodreads.
So, in no particular order …
Dead and Alive: Essays, by Zadie Smith. I admire her novels, but I think essays may be where Smith brings the full force of her talent. I thoroughly enjoyed this book … especially her takedown of the algorithms of social media and their infernal effects on the young.
The Book of Dust Vol. 1: La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman. A mission this year is to read Pullman’s prequel trilogy to His Dark Materials. One down. Oh, and it’s tremendous.
“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.” — Adrienne Rich
The poet Adrienne Rich had a long writing career and a busy activist life; for International Women’s Day, it feels appropriate to use this observation from the heady days of the 1970s.
By the time I got to university, Rich was that anomaly: a poet who was well known. Poems likeAunt Jennifer’s Tigers (which she wrote when she a student herself) were widely read, and as I moved into my university studies, I was absorbed by her collection Diving Into the Wreck, which was published in 1973.
Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 and died in 2012. I’m sure her work and words will inspire students and others for many years to come.
Bald as I am, I don’t give a lot of thought to hairstyle ideas. But the concept has very much been on my mind lately, because of an inundating number of ads for AI-powered apps that offer dizzying choices for switching up your look.
Dizzying, indeed, because the risks for these “fun” apps are serious, if not grim.
I’ve seen several online ads recently that pitch the ease of customizing hair styles. I was curious to see what they wanted, and a few taps later, there it was: all I needed to do was upload several photos of myself, from different poses.
This is of course where things can go haywire. Once you’ve uploaded your photos, you don’t know where they might end up. This is especially so because the Wild West nature of AI has new players emerging all the time… and even the biggest companies are not subject to much if any regulation.
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.” — Virginia Woolf
Captured in one of her many letters, the British novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf steps to the defence here of many readers who will start a new book before finishing another — or finishing several.
I definitely fall into the camp of having several (sometimes many) books in progress at once. Usually, I’m on track with one for a good while, but if I am, say, listening to an audiobook, I’ll have a primary bedside book for nighttime, and another tucked away in my backpack. That’s three there.
Adam Walsh and I scratched another one for the books today, with the monthly trivia show for CBC Radio’s The Signal. You can listen to the whole thing right here.
I thought it might be fun to recap some of the questions and themes of the show with notes and extra resources.
The Stones’s show after Keith’s heroin bust
I asked listeners why the Rolling Stones gave a concert in April 1979 in Oshawa, Ont., and for whom it benefited. (I erred by the way on air by saying 1978; that was when the trial was.)
UPDATE |In this post from Friday morning, I noted the PUB uses interruptions to make adjustments outside of the scheduled weekly setting … and it did. Early on Saturday morning, prices surged another 12.4 cents per litre.
Gas prices in Newfoundland and Labrador are regulated, which doesn’t mean they’re lower than other places (they’re generally not, as there’s a lot of terrain and a relatively small population in the mix) but at least there’s some transparency and oversight … and a cap on what dealers can charge.
Today, the Public Utilities Board raised pump prices by 6.7 cents a litre, bringing the highest price retailers can charge for self-serve in St. John’s, for instance, to $1.541 per litre. You can find cheaper prices, of course, but we can expect retailers to move with the setting.
The jump of course has to do with the war in Iran, particularly the attacks the U.S. and Israel started last weekend. The Friday price setting doesn’t factor in all the commodity market changes of the last week, which have been sharp.
Take a look at how the price of Brent crude has changed in the last six months … and really in the last six days.
Brent Crude Oil – Daily Prices Sep 2025–Mar 2026
BRENT CRUDE
Daily Close · Sep 2, 2025 – Mar 6, 2026 · USD / Barrel
“Etiquette in New York is all about time management. In other places, you seem rude if you see someone and don’t talk to them long enough. But here, it’s all about speed. And people are fine with that. It’s like, ‘Hello. It’s nice to see you. Thank you for giving me your kidney. I gotta go.’” — Amy Poehler
The comedian, writer and actor Amy Poehler wrote those words in 2006 for a New York magazine feature about etiquette. They must have struck a chord, as I used a smaller version for the original Dot Dot Dot back then, and I am, recycling. How virtuous.
Honestly, though, they did strike a chord, because I was struck when in New York City for the first time, several years earlier, how remarkably friendly folks were. Not expansive and overly conversational, but genuinely pleasant. The reputation for rudeness is not deserved.
This is Adam Walsh. He hosts (and produces) The Signal on CBC Radio in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I’m going to be his guest on Friday for a trivia show.
My job: to make him snicker. Or giggle. Or guffaw.
Will I succeed? You will need to tune in and find out. The show starts at noon NT (11:30 a.m. in most of Labrador), and runs an hour. We’re on CBC Radio One on your, well, radio, and you can listen online via the CBC Listen app. (From anywhere, too!) (And each episode is posted to CBC Listen for on-demand playback later, although I would not recommend phoning in with answers after the fact, lol.)
A little background. I’ve been guesting on CBC Radio’s midday radio show for a few decades, and through several incarnations, from Radio Noon through CrossTalk and now The Signal. I also guest-hosted the show through the years.
“The test of a cook is how she boils an egg. My boiled eggs are fantastic, fabulous. Sometimes as hard as a 100 carat diamond, or again soft as a feather bed, or running like a cooling stream, they can also burst like fireworks from their shells and take on the look and rubbery texture of a baby octopus. Never a dull egg, with me.” — Nancy Mitford
The British novelist Nancy Mitford wrote these words in a letter that was collected posthumously in 1993 in Love From Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford.
Mitford’s somewhat aristocratic family has intrigued people for generations, particularly how six sisters could be so divergent, with two fascists and a communist coming from under the same roof. Nancy Mitford earned her fame not from politics but from her writing; Love in a Cold Climate remains one of her best-known books.
Last year, the British dramatic series Outrageous chronicled the times of the six sisters, which speaks to the appeal of a family with a chaotic history.
A detail in the latest City of St. John’s economic snapshot caught my eye — and it speaks to an ongoing rift between what people are feeling and the bigger economic picture.
The city’s report, released Monday, says “inflation slowed to 1.3% in 2025, down from 2.2% in 2024, supported by a 9.9% decline in gasoline prices.”
So why does it feel like the cost of living is still a mighty problem, if not crisis? Are we living out a version of what commentator Kyla Scanlon notably dubbed a vibecession?
There are several explanations out there, and one of them is in the rest of the city’s bullet point on inflation: “However, shelter and food prices remained elevated.”
Housing and food are definitely two key areas where people always notice higher prices. The St. John’s housing market has been tight for some time, and I have done some double-takes about the prices that are being listed for rental problems in particular.
“It would be irresponsible for me and CNN to tell you what the person being gang-raped says, what the rapist says — and to give each equal time and moral equivalence. I can’t do that because it means being neutral in the face of unspeakable horror. When you’re neutral, you’re an accessory.” — Christiane Amanpour
Amanpour, for many years now a key international correspondent for CNN, made these remarks in a 2005 interview with Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey had asked her about reporting on poverty in Africa. During the interview, Amanpour also expressed remorse for not having paid attention to the genocide in Rwanda until it was too late, as her focus in those weeks had been on Serbia.
It’s been (counts fingers) six weeks, less a day, since I launched this website, and revived Dot Dot Dot, the blog I ran into the ground with intermittent activity for a decade and a half.
Some people have asked if I’m getting the response I’d like, and I have to say … sure! I knew going in that I’d be starting over from scratch, and that things would pick up over time. More on that in a bit.
First: In response to a request, you’ll see a share widget at the bottom of each post. Share away.
Second: When you do share to Facebook and other platforms, you’ll now see a post-specific image in the preview, rather than a graphic about the blog. I hope that makes things more attractive.
“It’s an odd pairing. I’ve always loved the audience, but from a distance. Once you’ve elicited a strong response from an audience, you want it again. That kind of an energy is as addictive as any narcotic.” — Tim Curry
These words come from Tim Curry’s memoir Vagabond, which was released last year. I came across these words Monday while listening to Curry narrate it.
It appears in a section about the time when his career seemed to have jet fuel, thanks to his breakthrough role as Frank N. Furter in the Rocky Horror Show and then then movie adaptation. Curry reveals that he felt could draw the energy from the floorboards during a performance — and yet also wanted to keep his distance from the audience once the lights went down.
Curry was not one for publicity, and when he describes how he avoids not only interviews but is cautious about interactions with fans and audience members, I wonder if he has come across as aloof.
The book is good. I finished it early this morning. Curry had a life-changing stroke in 2012, and has needed a wheelchair since. While his body has been affected, his mind is still intact, and that is clearly evident in the book, and in his performance of the audiobook.
On Friday night, Steven Page and his trio headlined the annual Big Ticket fundraiser for the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St. John’s. What an evening. (The photo above and another below come from the wonderful Alick Tsui, whose photos of the night are here.)
Among Page’s specialties in his post-Barenaked Ladies career have been these kinds of symphonic performances. He sang some well-known hits and some solo songs, all arranged with a full orchestra behind them. It was a great evening, and the NSO sounded terrific, too.
There was a lot of comedy, too, from the start. No surprise, given that Barenaked Ladies always had a tongue in its cheek, even though many of their early songs were about the vulnerability of growing up, particularly about moving out of late adolescence and into early adulthood.
For instance, the song Brian Wilson. Named for the period when the genius behind the Beach Boys could not get out of bed, it’s a song that Page, then a 19-year-old university student, wrote to make sense of the depression that he was feeling. It was one of the first Barenaked Ladies recordings, done again for their breakthrough album Gordon.
