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22
Dec
2021
Sunday December 5, 2021
After two weeks of reporting on B.C.’s floods, evacuations, washouts, and landslides, the CBC’s David Common was asked for his personal reaction to what he had seen.
He paused to think. I could see him collecting his thoughts, to avoid rambling or repeating what he had already said.
Water, he said. The sheer power of something that most of us take for granted.
Indeed, most of us do take water for granted. We think of water as benign. Friendly. Necessary.
This last few weeks, water has gone out of control.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: water, BC, McLuhan, floods
25
Oct
2017
It rained on our drive home from Vancouver. Although “rained” doesn’t adequately describe the downpour. Genesis says that at creation, God “divided the waters above from the waters below.” On that drive home, the waters above and below re-united.
There was so much rain on the road that our car used four extra litres of fuel going home than going out, on exactly the same road, just squishing water out of the way of the tires.
I would have looked for an Ark, if I could have seen it through a windshield streaming with water.
Oddly, my rearview mirrors were still clear. Because the rain wasn’t hitting them at all. I could see clearly, back down the highway.
It reminded me of one of Marshall McLuhan’s aphorisms: "We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror."
It’s a metaphoric way of saying that we can’t see into the future.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Moses, McLuhan, future, past, rearview mirror, rain