The human body is a strange machine. Its proclivity for habit and rhythm is what keeps its day-to-day functioning on track. We’re all creatures of routine for a reason. One of the strongest and most disruptive-when-disrupted rhythms is that of sleep. And I’m a guy who LOVES his sleep. But during this fifth trip to […]
I stocked up on books in anticipation of this. Downloaded a few movies and shows I’ve been looking forward to watching. You’d think by now I’d have long haul travel down. But we just started to taxi down the runway and I realize that I’m distracted. Not in a bad way. I keep thinking about […]
Stop slouching. I hear that in my head. Sometimes it’s in mom’s voice, sometimes Nan’s. I usually snap back up. But I’m sitting in a meeting, fighting to pay attention as I become aware that I’m almost sliding out of the chair like I’m melting. That soon I’ll be under the table. It has been […]
Thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen. Caught myself in a moment of staring at my hands today. It’s been busier than I remember here at the hospital in Port au Prince. Non-stop. Case to case. Meeting to meeting. Like a river of issues and answers flowing through this place and you’re trying hard not to let the current […]
I needed a few minutes to myself. But that’s an almost impossible ask in hospital as busy and as open as Bernard Mevs in Port au Prince. Funny how the conditioning kicks in. As soon as the team touched down here in Haiti this week it was like we heard a starter pistol and the […]
There’s an art to fly-casting. How you hold the rod. The action of your wrist. Your ability to coax the line to your will until a rhythm takes the fly exactly where you want it. Late summer sun still over the trees. The rippling river ebbing and flowing beneath your knees. I don’t think I […]
It’s iceberg season. There’s one stuck in the channel out near Kelly’s Island in Conception Bay. Been there for days now. I was out walking with my son, Mark, as the evening sun was busy giving the coastline a fresh coat of gold. It struck me how lucky I am to live a place like […]
I always thought the term African Skies would be a false idiom. I mean really, how different can the sky be in Africa from the sky in Newfoundland and Labrador? How can the clouds in Ethiopia be different than those in Calgary? The earth may be large, but we all share the same sky and the geophysics […]