NEW YEAR SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ON. 2 AM ET, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2022. It has lately been seriously enough cold up here on the eastern shore of Lake Superior (though nothing like Edmonton, Alberta at – 26° C). Most recently in the local metropolis of Sault Ste Marie the weather has […]

NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK : L. FRANK BUNTING, VISITING COLUMNIST FROM PANCAKE BAY. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16/WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2021. I am just down from the new north on a visit, communing with the head office staff, reintegrating into the mind of the herd, and enjoying unusually brilliant autumn colours here on the northwest shore […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ONTARIO. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021. The deep northern autumn is setting in. Forecasts here call for a low of 0° C this coming Friday night (and early Saturday morning). I’m in one of my recurrent anti-political moods. I agree with the UK emeritus professor Malcolm Gaskill, who writes […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ONTARIO. 24TH OF MAY WEEKEND. The May 13, 2021 issue of the New York Review of Books has an essay by Mark Lilla on the German novelist Thomas Mann (1875–1955), and his rather strange 1918 book Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. (The NYRB Classics series is in fact […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY/ALONA BAY, ONTARIO. Some on Twitter have been reacting with bemusement to President Biden’s closing remarks in his first televised address to the American people this past Thursday night : “Thank you for taking the time and listening. I look forward to seeing you.” It is the very last […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ON. JANUARY 18, 2021, 2 AM, 2 PM ET : Some worried that yesterday would be a kind of state-Capitol reprise of what transpired at the national Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. According to CNN, however : “Weekend protests at state capitols stayed small amid heavy […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ON. OCTOBER 7, 2020 : On a trip last year I bumped into a gentleman from the white suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia who claimed that, whatever else, Donald Trump “isn’t as bad as Warren Harding.” For those of us who know next to nothing about Warren Gamaliel Harding, […]

L. FRANK BUNTING : History is written by the winners as the old adage has it. Looking at Donald Trump’s USA halfway through 2020 suggests a corollary : it is also constantly being re-written as the winners change. “America” today is not what it was in 1920, to say nothing of 1820, 1720, or especially […]

Our spies in the Golden State North have sometimes lately alluded to a possible great trek east out of San Francisco along US Interstate Highway 80, in search of better ground. The concept is not unique. As long ago as March 22 the Los Angeles Times was reporting : “As the coronavirus pandemic tightens its […]

[UPDATED FEB 19, 20]. One particular strange thing about Steve Bannon’s appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Friday, February 7, 2020, was his portrayal of Boris Johnson’s Brexit- at-last on January 31 as an achievement of Donald Trump. In a similar vein I do not at all agree with the Daily Beast assessment that […]