Thunder Bay

People who don’t know me well wonder that I’d give up my badge for an apron, thinking that flipping burgers is a big step down. If they asked me, which they don’t, I would tell them that when a man stumbles onto happiness, he’d be a fool to pass it by. It’s as simple as that. Sam’s Place makes me happy.

The greatest word in the human vocabulary has only four letters and no definition that has ever been adequate. We love our dogs, we love our children. We love God and chocolate cake. We fall in love and fall out of love. We die for love and we kill for love. We can’t spend it, we can’t eat it when we’re starving or drink it when we’re dying of thirst. It’s no good against the bitter cold of winter, and even a cheap electric fan will do more for you on a hot summer day. But ask most human beings what they value above all else in this life, and five will get you ten, it’s love. We’re a screwy species, I thought.

Why would I be angry? Because they believe a thing does not make it so. There is no dignity in anger. But I am also not a kicked dog.

The United States has a homicide rate three times that of Canada; two-thirds of those homicides are committed with firearms. A child in the United States is twelve times more likely to die of a firearm injury than a child in Canada. I could go on. The evidence in support of Canada’s attitude and legislative action is so convincing only an idiot wouldn’t get it.

Smells are the time machines of human perception. A scent can take you instantly back to a particular place and time.

Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don’t always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you’ll be the one to beat the odds.

Meloux had never seen his own son. Never carried him on his shoulders or held him when he cried. Never felt the small boy’s breath, warm and sweet smelling, break against his face. Never knew the pleasures of being for his son the slayer of monsters imagined in the night.

the good smell of wood smoke, a scent comforting and welcoming, the essence, it had always seemed to me, of where the human experience and the wilderness met.

Because they believe a thing does not make it so. There is no dignity in anger. But

Hummingbird told me about the Path of Souls. She told me she would be waiting for me at the end…I want to be on the Path of Souls. I want to be with Hummingbird.

A man’s reach should exceed his grasp; else what’s a heaven for? (Quote by Robert Browning)

stupid satisfaction. “You got a letter up

The towering pines and the hemlocks bearded like druids of eld . . . something, something.

Sometimes trying to talk sense to you, Corcoran O’Connor, is as useful as trying to talk a fart out of smelling.

Our pets had always been turtles and fish, and once we had a canary that wouldn’t shut up. Jenny named it The Artist Formerly Known As Tweety. We called it Art.