Absent Wells, brows perched low and high

Here in Afghanistan (for that is where my assignment has taken me, for the last several days and a few more), internet access is spotty and not exactly zippy. You rarely hear about that because apparently there are other problems too. Anyway, I am sorry I have not been blogging much. Indeed I’m not really blogging now, except to steer you toward two pieces I wrote for the print edition. Both were finished before the current coalition unpleasantness. The first had a long "lead time" imposed by production deadlines for our super-fabulous Newsmakers issue. The other just took a long time to research. Here:

• A column, theoretically packed with larfs, about ideas for the next several Bond movies.
• An article for our mysterious back pages about the odd tendency for Canadian orchestras to play works by Canadian composers once, and then never again. As the article acknowledges, many new Canadian works richly deserve to be played only once. But others deserve a happier posterity and don’t get it. This is my attempt to explain why that’s a problem. If I was certain our new Minister of Canadian Heritage had job security, I would urge him to read it.

Don’t read them both at once! They have to tide you over to the weekend. I miss you all.