Saturday Morning Words + Coffee

Looking at speed today. A short poem or "fragment" from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. What does an eagle tell us about how to live?

Welcoming in spring with William Blake. Art: An Orchard in Spring, Claude Monet, 1886. Sound the flute! Now it’s mute! Bird’s delight, Day and night, Nightingale, In the dale, Lark in sky,— Merrily, Merrily merrily, to welcome in the year. Little boy, Full of joy; Little girl, Sweet and small; Cock does crow, So do you; Merry voice, Infant noise; Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year. Little la...

Calpurnia has a warning for Caesar on the Ides of March.

Discussing The Cross of Snow, one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's more personal poems. In the long, sleepless watches of the night,    A gentle face — the face of one long dead —    Looks at me from the wall, where round its head    The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white    Never through martyrdom of fire was led    To its repose; nor can in...

Looking at some work from William Blake, DH Lawrence and Thomas Harris. To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand  And Eternity in an hour A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage  A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons Shudders Hell thr' all its regions  A dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the...

Reading Sonnet 116 and talking about the enduring power of love. The painting in the thumbnail is Il Bacio ( The Kiss ) by Francesco Hayez, 1869. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wa...

Saturday Morning Words + Coffee. Reading Alexander Pope's Ode on Solitude. Finding contentment in uncertain times. Happy the man, whose wish and care    A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air,                             In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,    Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade,      ...

Saturday Morning Words + Coffee. Reading Emily Dickinson's Parting and talking about immortality for a few minutes. My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Tolling the Bell from the plague years, to Hemingway, to Metallica. A look at John Donne's No Man Is An Island, followed by some commentary by me. No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne we...

A reading from Act 5, Scene 5, with some commentary from me. Macbeth has just been told his wife is dead, and things are looking pretty bleak. She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. — To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to d...

Saturday Morning Words + Coffee Rich Duke Suspected Of Killing Young Wife might be the headline of this story if written today. Here's a reading of Robert Browning's My Last Duchess, followed by some commentary from me. Follow along here: That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and...

Saturday Morning Words + Coffee. A reading of DH Lawrence's poem Snake, followed by some stories and commentary from me.

I talk to sommelier Lesley Provost about inexpensive and quality wine picks for the holidays.  We focus on wines available in the LCBO in Ontario, but you can find them in many places. Lesley was a wine teacher at George Brown in Toronto and went to work for a winery in BC a few years back. She was recently lucky enough to avoid investing in a restaurant before COVID changed the business landscape...