The Title of this Blog

The title of this blog comes from the first line of a poem attributed to Hwang Chini (?-1530), a Korean kisaeng sijo poet.

山은 녯山이로되 물은 녯물 안이로다
晝夜에 흘은이 녯물이 이실쏜야
人傑도 물과 같도다 가고 안이 오노뫼라.

Rough translation: The mountains are the old mountains, but the water is not the old water
It flows day and night, so how could it be the old water?
Great people are like water: They go and never return.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

I have been re-reading Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, and was amazed by how attractive the description of the corruption and irrationality of small-town Ontario politics at the turn of the last century. The technique for grabbing the rural vote is to have a meal with every single farmer in the surrounding countryside? The overall picture is of an engaged citizenry who actually have generally met their Member of Parliament even though he is described as generally not travelling to the town very often. And how many newspapers? In the pre-blog era, most towns only had one, and that was not nearly as vigorously or openly partisan as the newspapers described in Sunshine Sketches.