Our post on Vin Scully, 81, who just wrapped up his 60th season calling play-by-play for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (and plans to stay on through next season), elicited some wonderful reader comments. First, Frank MacDonald (yes, that Frank MacDonald, the other Inverness County writer who deserves a Giller): Enjoyed your reminder of the Koufax perfect game. In my own writing during the baseball season, the game plays the role for me that music plays for many others. Even when it is televised, as it mostly is in this house, it is two rooms away, and the sound of the...

13 November, 2009

Frank MacDonald also sent us a song he wrote "many years ago." "There has never been a musician I could interest in it," he writes. "Not being a singer myself, I converted into a talking blues that I entertain myself with from time to time in the car, As a old Brooklyn Dodger fan, you may enjoy it. As a Cleveland fan my chances to enjoy things have been few and far between since 1954." SANDLOT KID He lived on a park bench, reading baseball box scores And paid his way doing odd and end chores. But he loved to remember when baseball was magic, And...

13 November, 2009

At Sydney's Waterfront Pavillion Thursday night, it's The Party Of The Year — and that's saying something in Cape Breton! The Cape Breton Island Film Series' 4th annual benefit for L'Arche Cape Breton gets under way at 7 pm at the Empire Theatre with the acclaimed indie film GOODBYE SOLO, the story of two men from completely different backgrounds who form an unlikely friendship. At 9, the action shifts to the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavillion, next to the Big Fiddle, for live music and dancing to the Blues Merchants and Cape Breton's best Lebanese buffet. The whole L'Arche Community will be there,...

11 November, 2009

The Globe's Michael Valpy has a thoughtful piece on the burgeoning interest in Remembrance Day commemorations, especially among young people. The graphic below accompanies the article. While researching his namesake, Rev. Miles Tompkins, a First World War army chaplain, Contrarian reader Miles Tompkins came upon some sobering numbers: The waste of human life hit Cape Breton and the Diocese of Antigonish very hard. The diocese runs from Our Lady of Lourdes in Stellarton to the tip of Cape Breton, and even included the Italian Mission and a Syrian Parish in Cape Breton. Well over 500 boys from this diocese were killed in...

11 November, 2009
Vin Scully said last night that he would continue to serve as the Los Angeles Dodgers play-by-play announcer through the 2010 season. Scully, who turns 82 this month, began broadcasting Dodgers games in 1950. Vin Scully BaseballContrarian began listening to him not long after as a devoted Brooklyn Dodger fan living in Chappaqua, NY. Hiding under bed covers, ear pressed to the radio speaker, we heard games come alive through Scully's gift for vivid similes. He said Bob Gibson "pitches as though he's double-parked." He said, "Losing feels worse than winning feels good." He said, "Sometimes it seems like [Bobby Bonilla's] playing underwater." He said, "Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, not illumination." He said, "When [Maury Wills] runs, it's all downhill." While calling 1987 All-Star Game, Scully saw the Toronto Blue Jay's uber-smooth shortstop Tony Fernandez for the first time. "He's like a bolt of silk," Scully said. Because of Scully's gift for words, we still prefer listening to baseball on the radio over watching it on TV. On the radio, games unfolds in your mind, unconstrained by camera angles and closeups. As the Terry Cashman tune puts it. "I saw it on the radio." After the jump, the word-for-word transcript of Scully calling the 9th inning of Sandy Koufax's Perfect Game, September 9, 1965:
11 November, 2009

How small is small? The University of Utah has a guide: [Click to open the interactive graphic, then use the slider below the image.]...

10 November, 2009

Tories knock off Bloc in eastern Quebec - Gazette Tories, NDP make gains in by-elections - Star Tories retake former Nova Scotia stronghold - Globe and Mail Byelection win will boost Tories in Quebec: MP - CBC This is likely a losing battle, but could the national press corp please stop calling the Harper Conservatives "Tories?" The Conservative Party of Canada is not simply a renamed Progressive Conservative Party. It was borne of a hostile takeover by the Reform Party, thinly disguised as a merry merger. Headline writers need short substitutes for party names — Grits, NDP, Bloc, etc. — but that's no excuse for...

10 November, 2009

The big story in the UK today? A British soldier dies in Afghanistan. The PM sends a handwritten a condolence letter, but misspells the soldier's name. The mother makes a stink. The PM calls. The mother records the call. The mother turned the tape over to the tabloid Sun, whose outrage barely masked its glee. The Guardian and the Times have more balanced accounts. There are few things more sacred in journalism, politics, and life than the grieving mother of a soldier killed in action. In this case, however, having listened to the call with rapt horror,  my symathies go to Brown. [UPDATE] Geraint Jones writes check in...

10 November, 2009

Josh and Jacob belt out the national anthem: ...

08 November, 2009

A funny thing happened to Jeff White of the Halifax design group Brightwhite during a well-received traveling seminar sponsored by Economic and Rural Development Nova Scotia last month. In Guysborough Town, the seminar took place in the local school. All was going well until White began his presentation on social marketing for small business. [B]ecause we were in a school, all the main social media sites were blocked by the school board firewall! The principal summoned a Grade 7 nerd, who showed me how to bypass the blockage, and off we went. I'll seriously never understand why schools do their best to make...

08 November, 2009
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