Military Goats In Canada

Long time readers will know, and we hope, support, this blog’s devout belief that no beast of creature is more endowed with nobility, martial spirit, intelligence and good looks than the military goat.

Last month, while travelling on holiday with my son, we stopped at Old Fort Henry in Kingston, Ontario, and I was delighted to find not one but two goats.  Each goat was provided with staff, two smartly uniformed reenactors, who answered questions from the tourists.  The goats were too busy cropping the sward to reply to questions.

 

The day before, in Ottawa, my son John and I also saw the final changing of the guard on Parliament Hill for the summer of 2018, and while no goats were on display, there were plenty of red coats.   

One doesn’t wish to be overly jingoistic, but in a year where President Trump has been ratcheting up the pressure on us with his trade and tariff threats, and threatening the ruination of Canada, it was very reassuring to see Canadian pageantry - civil, orderly and just a tad understated - on display.

 

A Holy Jolt of Joe

Seemed a suitable place for a Mad Padre to have lunch and a shot of coffee. Gotta love Vancouver. This was taken at the Wired Monk on West 4th in Kitsilano, near Jericho Beach.

In Between Holidays, Nothing Happens But Magic

The title of this post is taken from the title of a piece by Manny Fernandez that appeared in the New York Times on 30 December of last year, the same day that my wife Kay and I left New York after an all too brief visit. As Fernandez says, the period between Christmas and New Years "is a week of suspended animation in the city, in between holidays, when the great systems of New York — the schools, the courts, the communications media, Wall Street, City Hall, the bodegas in Queens — slow to an administrative crawl or shut down altogether, when New York City belongs not to New Yorkers, but to Spaniards, Italians, Canadians, Germans, Californians. Tens of thousands of people have left town to go back home, while tens of thousands of others have left home to come to town."


For three days we heard languages from all over the world as we wandered around Manhattan, plus of course the local accents of "New Yawkahs". I thought some of the best voices were those of signs. Here are some signs worth repeating.



Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin off Times Square - Anglo-Catholic liturgy done with great devotion and skill.





Clash of cultures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:



Wall art at the Borders store beneath the Times Warner Building.



Banner in Central Park:



As a man in the Hernandez article says, "I don't think there's any city in the entire world like this." Ditto, buddy.