To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
1
Sep
2019
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” So said the inscription at the entry to hell, in Dante’s Inferno.
Dante was an optimist. He saw hell as some other place, from which he could return safely to his everyday world.
I’m afraid that our world — this world, the one we live in, the one our grandchildren will live in — is becoming its own hell.
I am optimistic about individual relationships. I have yet to meet anyone who would refuse to help another individual in need. Race, education, and wealth don’t seem to matter IF – and it’s a big “if” -- there’s genuine contact, person to person, soul to soul.
At the same time, I am profoundly pessimistic about humanity as a whole. Collectively, we humans persist in seeking short-term solutions. Our corporate mindset is incorrigibly greedy, seeking our own benefit even if it harms others. Yes, even if it will harm us, farther down the line.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: methane, corporations, opioid, Amazon, fracking
28
Aug
I’ve spent my life working with words. I love words. Reluctantly I’m recognizing that words can also form prisons for our minds.
I’m not convinced that we need words to think. Dogs don’t need words to figure out how to get around an obstacle.
Certainly we use words to reason things out. But I don’t think many of us realize how much the words we use may also restrict our ability to reason.
You can’t use “nigger,” for example, without imagining that person as a lesser human. I have never heard “nigger” used as praise.
You can’t address someone as “Captain” or “Doctor” without a sense of deferring to authority.
In the same way, “King” and “Lord” have acquired a patina of sacredness in the religious world. But the words are largely meaningless in today’s world.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: religion, words, Trinity
25
Hong Kong is a thriving hub of international business. Kashmir is a backwater, even by Indian standards.
Hong Kong has world-class communications. Kashmir has frequent power failures. Internet communication, iffy at any time, has been shut down completely by Indian forces. So have telephones. And the post office -- you can’t even send out a scenic postcard!
In Hong Kong, almost everyone speaks English, the result of 156 years of British rule. In Kashmir, only the educated class speaks English.
And Hong Kong is home to about 300,000 Canadians -- many sent as children to Canadian high schools in the 1980s to provide an escape plan for their parents in case the handover to China went badly. According to Global Affairs Canada, Kashmir has just 12 Canadian residents.
Therefore it’s natural, even inevitable, that our media would concentrate on Hong Kong and ignore Kashmir.
Tags: Nuclear weapons, Kashmir, Hong Kong
22
Hear the sad story of Johnathan Fewless
who knew that at sex he was hopelessly clewless.
He admits that without a specific instruction
he won’t recognize an attempt at seduction.
Coy hints are too easily misconstrued;
they don’t always mean someone wants to get scrued....
Categories: Poetry
Tags: sex, seduction, humour
21
Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but as summer scrolls towards a closing, I miss community picnics.
I seem to recall when every organization had a company picnic, a Sunday School picnic, a team picnic.
At times, I’ve been put in charge of these events. I have fond memories of planning games and activities that would build a feeling of family. Softball games, where it was okay to strike the boss out. A tug-of-war. Foot races. Egg and spoon races. Three-legged races. Sack races. Water balloon tosses…
At one church picnic, I set up a potato-peeling challenge: the winner had the longest unbroken potato peel.
And at a company picnic, I remember teaching people how to make s’mores around a campfire. The most common s’more consists of chocolate and partly melted marshmallow sandwiched between two graham wafers. But even better is chocolate and marshmallow, sealed into a cavity sliced out of a partially peeled banana, wrapped in aluminum foil and roasted in the embers of a bonfire until the whole thing is a drippy gooey mess.
Tags: picnics, volunteering, CentrePiece