Keith Dryden

Meter mix-up Those of you who have to venture into towns or cities are well acquainted with parking meters. Recently I pulled in to a meter that still had 15 minutes on its dial. Since I planned to stay longer than that I deposited enough coinage to allow parking for one hour. The meter brusquely […] Read more

Feeling pulses We were the beneficiaries of a provincial by-election recently, a contest in which the provincial Liberal leader was striving for a seat. This put the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party on their mettle. First came a telephone survey to see if I was greatly disturbed about anything in particular. The punch line was: […] Read more

The human body has amazing recuperative powers, a fact the average doctor well knows. But the human mind tends to get in a panic when Junior gets a croupy cough or Janella Ann sprains her ankle. We hear complaints about the level of medical care now being offered. Young mothers are disturbed because antibiotics are […] Read more

A Dick legacy George Dick, now a Torontonian, has written a book that takes a fictional look at life in rural Saskatchewan, specifically in the Foam Lake-Wynyard area. It is not a pretty picture because it focuses on a family’s cover-up for a sexual predator in their midst. The reason this book interested me is […] Read more

Target of jokes In every country there is a a class of persons that serves as the butt of jokes. They may be an ethnic group, an interest group, politicians, lawyers, clergymen, whatever. Usually the jokes take one of two main themes, the stupidity of the target group or their obsession with accumulating money. In […] Read more

Right defined Preston Manning continues his campaign to form a coalition of the right. Since my favorite reading is the dictionary, I checked to see the alternatives available under this form of political alignment. I found right could mean straight, in accordance with truth, justice or law, ethically good or righteous, most convenient, satisfactory, in […] Read more

Getting noticed Football teams are scrambling to get publicity now that the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association have reluctantly concluded their over-extended regular seasons. It takes press agents with imagination to come up with attention-gripping story ideas. How are you to sell football with a story about signing a second-string defensive back […] Read more

Sound of silence The atmosphere in newspaper offices has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. When I was learning my trade the newsroom was a noisy place. Typewriters were rattling, instructions delivered were easily audible to all, there was noise of traffic in the busy street outside the windows and we had Bill Bradley […] Read more

Weed patrol One of the chores we used to moan and groan about as kids on the farm was weeding the garden. It was regarded as a form of penal servitude. The odd twist is that when we later became property owners the first thing I and my siblings did was plant a garden and […] Read more

Not so new What goes around must come around. A few decades ago I interviewed a 92-year-old at Abernethy, Sask., about the Sintaluta Trial of 1902. He was one of the last living witnesses of that hearing, which established some important grain-delivery rights for farmers. Bill Ismond told me when this country was opening up […] Read more