Back row: Gary Bernier, Steve Rae, J.D. Campbell, Kris Hoots and Steve Thomas. Front row: Sharon Bernier, Matthew Burns and Sandra Burns.

Take a look at the Wizard (bi)Weekly.

This is Micah. Micah was a shelter dog.  A German Shepherd/Sheltie mix. Smaller than a shepherd with the long hair, speed and herding mentality of a Sheltie. Loved people. Indifferent to other dogs. From day one, always stayed in our yard. Instinctively knew where the borders were.  Let him out, he would roam the perimeter, do […]

(The new blog of the partners is full of amazing stuff. I’ll give you a link to it when we get a little deeper in the rabbit hole. – Indy)

True Adventure A contrast of opposites is the foundation of effective communication. A thing cannot exist without its opposite. But opposites aren’t always easy to detect. As an example, the opposite of “freedom” isn’t really “slavery,” because slavery no longer exists in our society like it did 160 years ago. We need to contrast freedom […]

Hugh, The wizard was pecking away at his keyboard when I walked in with your email. I believe he heard me come into the room but he didn’t look up because the wizard has to look at the keys when he types. When I read him your subject line, “I’ve been thinking… dangerous pastime, don’t […]

Mike should not have been my dog. Sue and I had six dogs on our farm in Africa. My two large ones, her two medium-sized and an ankle snapper each.  Named after my father’s favourite dog – an English Bull Terrier – I had always liked big dogs. Having our older dogs put down and finding […]

Hey Roy!  Hope to see you tomorrow night, but just in case I miss you, I can’t help but share this with you. Also: this is just 100% me feeling proud of being good at something, and you’re one of the few people I can honestly share stuff like this with. Maybe I’m trying to […]

It started with the purchase of a $5 watch at Wal-Mart yesterday.  My 9-year-old daughter, Darby, wanted a watch like mine, so she bought one.  Little did we know that the alarm on the watch is set for 4:00 a.m.   When the alarm sounded, it woke both Darby and her 10-year-old sister, Alex.  Darby […]

My Guardian Angel by Norma Beech Divot is my guardian angel. Five years ago, and for a few years before that, my husband and I were Divot’s next door neighbors.  We could always count on Divot meeting us at the fence in the morning to see us off to work, and she was guaranteed to be in […]

Dear Ralph, My name is David and I want to share a curious story with you. I was recently taking a walk with my friend Dana along the Albany New York bike path. It runs along the Hudson River and is quite rural. Grass, trees, birds, etc. There is really nothing created by man short […]

We Saved Each Other The first attack came out of nowhere.  My prized hunting dog lashed out at my daughter and struck her between the eyes with his front canines.  Chaos erupted.  With blood streaming down her face, I rushed the dog out of the room and down into his kennel.  Off to the emergency room.  Michelle would recover with […]

Bruno I wish this story had a happy ending. Bruno joined our family in 2012. He was one of the many changes that we made that year to help our daughter battle the breast cancer diagnosis that she received at just 28 years old. She asked for a puppy. If she had asked for 1,000 […]

Diary Of A Fish By Gabe and Dave Weiss For our fish Day 1:  I’m just a lost soul, swimming in a fishbowl.  “Hey, what’s up Al?”  “Just swimmin’ the dream, Eddie. How about you?”  “Not much, out for a quick lap around the old dome, ya know?” “Sure do. Enjoy it and I’ll see […]

Adopting Milo Can we keep him?  My eleven-year-old daughter Maddi was holding a tiny Malshi aka, Shih Tzu-Maltese mix.  I still don’t know what was cuter, the puppy or Maddi’s eyes of excited hope.  Both of my kids eagerly informed me that he was free, and the owners had already paid for all his shots […]

The Fateful Pardon… At fish camp, in Wa-Wa Canada, the bunks were sheltered from the rain but not from the rodents.  The morning routine was to live trap mice and then have “Swim for your Life!” competitions. Each morning 15 men had their mice and would meet at the dock.  The morning lake was smooth like glass […]

Dog(s) of the Year(s)  If my wife, Susan, had been an exotic dancer, she would have fan-danced to David Rose’s 1962 classic, The Stripper, as “Shorty Keystone”. Because according to Sooz, stripper nicknames are best derived by combining that of your first dog with the street where you lived. Ergo, had I headlined for the […]

Will, I, too, like Seneca. Eight of his quotes appear in the Random Quotes database at MondayMorningMemo.com, along with four quotes from Marcus Aurelius. Seneca was one of the later Stoics and Marcus Aurelius was the final one. I prefer these two, I think, because their perspectives are more refined than the earlier Stoics who […]

Murphy was a neighbor we grew up with and my oldest brother’s best friend. He was the youngest of three brothers. As a young child he had a serious heart condition and had several surgeries. One surgery resulted in him losing sections of his small intestine. The net result was he had the worst smelling […]

The More Connected We Are the Less Connected We Become – a 600-word essay on human behaviour at a theme park: Excuse me, sorry, just trying to get through, oops – sorry… These were the first words I mumbled at the start of a recent family vacation at Universal Studios Orlando. Being Canadian, and raised […]

“Moral reforms and deteriorations are moved by large forces, and are mostly caused by reactions from the habits of a preceding period. Backwards and forwards swings the great pendulum, and its alternations are not determined by a few distinguished folk clinging to the end of it.” – Sir Charles Petrie, The Victorians (1960)

Subtleties of Ad Writing Revealed, Line-by-Line Richard Kessler built one of the most famous stores in America.  You might remember his name from the Monday Morning Memo about origin stories published on March 20, 2017. Here is Kessler’s origin story in a 60-second radio ad: “My Dad was a house painter. He taught me to […]

Want to build a cabin in the Village of the Lost Boys? You won’t believe all the cool stuff you get in return for your tax-deductible (in the U.S.) donation. 🙂

I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lordsWatch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords And wizardry of ghosts.  II In […]

“This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This […]

Hi, I’m Rob Kessler, yeah that Kessler, son of Richard and brother to Monica. I invented a new kind of shirt that makes guys look fantastic.  You’ll see what I mean the moment you look in the mirror after trying one on. “Wow! Is that me?” And you can try one on right now at Harleys Menswear. My company is called goTieless […]

Two Alpha Tigers Two alpha tigers pent up in a cage, Pacing back and forth seeking personal space.Removed from their lives, thrust into treatment, The tigers distressed, aggravated …displaced. “You’ve been approved for bone marrow transplant.”Arrangements are made! No time to recant.Multiple myeloma, a blood marrow cancer,“You’re going to Washington for stem cell transplant.” Uprooted from life […]

Hi Indy, I captured this picture today from the back of the room (in a city and location I’m legally unable to disclose… I’ve also pixelated the faces) as Charlie Moger captivated an exclusive room of North America’s best large animal veterinarians. These surgeons work with the horses, trainers, and owners whose names are known […]

Here are some links Leah sent us to explore Paul Kirby’s website. https://www.alproductions.orghttps://www.alproductions.org/creative-processhttps://www.alproductions.org/robothttps://www.alproductions.org/paintings

Register for the May 2nd Day of All Days with Special Guests

Register for the May 2nd Day of All Days with Special Guests

NOTE FROM INDY – I liked Jeff’s story so much at 654 words that I wanted to hear what happens next, so I asked him to make it longer… A Long Way From Usual Charlie leaned forward into the fear allowing it to choke the breath from his body. His fear had taken everything from […]

The King of Salem Once upon a time long, long ago, there was an old shepherd named Abraham. One day while his flock of sheep were feeding in his pasture, one of them wandered off into the forest.  When Abraham noticed that one was missing, he knew it must have wandered off into the forest, […]

A dog named Little Mountain Music and a harmonica was all Mig’s father left him before leaving. He headed towards better chances of finding gigs. Mom wasn’t around. She lived two towns over in Deadwood. She was working. He wasn’t old enough to know what kind of work, but old enough to know it was […]

Did the Poet Even Know It? December 30, 2019 It is the Christmas season…so why is my faith shaken?  Growing up, I couldn’t stand church camps or anything of the sort. Instead, I wanted to be outside, finding bugs, chasing animals and building forts. Yet, as I grow older and come to learn what life’s […]

600 words. I can do that. Easy. I wonder. 600 words. Such a random number. Or is it? Why not 500? or 300? Will 600 words prove to be the secret to a great story that’ll be revealed later? What’s the Wizard got up his sleeve?  I’m digressing. For some time I’ve had this idea for […]

Feathers “Sterling, do you like the present I brought you?”“Oh. Felix. It’s you again. What present?”“Come on Sterling, are you blind? It’s right at your feet.”“Oh no! No, No, No! That’s Robinson’s and Rosie’s egg, you dirty crumb-snatcher! Take it back. Take it back to their nest right now.”“Why? Ravens eat eggs. Especially bite-size blue […]

This is the photo book of the bicycle adventure last Christmas with Mia (inside the d of Wizard) and Jeffrey (wearing the XXXL helmet last worn by – this is true – Shaq O’Neal.) The wizard is behind the first A in Academy, and Princess Pennie is between the wizard and Mia. It’s a funny, […]

At the foot of the glacier I squat down in order to hear more loudly the percolation of meltwater from the glacier’s cold lip, the hissing bursts of air as small pockets within the ice release their stores of ancient atmosphere. With my head tilted this close, I can feel the glacier’s frigid exhalation against […]

“The reason radical changes in the human environment caused by the industrial revolution are so anxiety-producing is not that they keep us from predicting a benign future for ourselves. We’ve never been able to do that anyway. It’s that, apparently, major changes in Homo sapiens’s physical environment are occurring with what scientists believe is unprecedented […]

“In a bombing run over Kassel, Germany, Elmer Bendiner’s B-17 bomber was barraged by 20-millimeter shells which resulted in direct hits on their gas tanks. But none of the shells exploded. The next day, the maintenance chief found 11 shells inside the gas tanks, any one of which should have taken the plane down.  When […]

Downsizing Moving from a place picked out by hopes and dreams to a place selected by life and circumstances involves a balance of resiliency, and resignation. My dad and step mom lived in the same house for decades and it was easy to think they were still thriving there. We want things to stay the […]

I am writing from your future to let you know there is hope for you. The path will be treacherous and full of obstacles. Remember that the Dark Side known as the Straights are deadly serious. Negativity is their food. Humor was officially banned in 2022.Comedy clubs were closed down, books containing humor were burned and […]

Proud Dad Moments They don’t hand you an owner’s manual. The feedback loop is a little wonky at best. Your intentions are good. You do your best, but how do you know? The text read, “Just so you know before I tell you this, I’m caught up on my studies. But I won 9 beers […]