In my latest Loonie Politics column I question the urgency, given the COVID-19 pandemic, of Canada’s ongoing bid to buy a UN Security Council non-veto seat because otherwise Norway might get it.

“But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”

Anne in Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Of the things that frighten us, the fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction is certainly one of the worst… In many preliterate cultures solitude is thought to be so intolerable that a person makes a great effort never to be alone; only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves…. The Latin locution for ‘being alive’ was inter hominem esse, which literally meant ‘to be among men’; whereas ‘to be dead’ was inter hominem esse desinere, or ‘to cease to be among men.’”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

In my latest Epoch Times column I ask why after all its horrors. misdeeds and lies, most recently the Chinese government deliberately hiding the COVID-19 outbreak from the world while it spread, people including in our government still take a rosy view of communism.

In my latest National Post column I express gratitude for all the things that make me happy normally and are now helping me through the quarantine including (my life is so interesting words may fail you here) a brilliantly designed new power bar protecting my vital computer lifeline to the world.

“I laid her life out on her desk like a losing hand of solitaire…”

The narrator in Spider Robinson Time Travelers Strictly Cash (he's going through a woman's personal documents)

“To prevent a red herring from being pulled across the trail...”

Paul Craig Roberts Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era