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4
Sep
2022
Sunday September 4, 2022
By now, everyone must have seen the video of Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland being accosted in the lobby of a hotel in Grand Prairie, Alberta, on a visit to her home province; she was born in Peace River, north of Grand Prairie.
Freeland is quite short, even in high heels. One of her own Tweets gives her height as “5 feet 2 inches, on a good day.”
The man – identified by his own Internet postings as Elliott McDavid – towers over her. He’s almost a stereotype of an Alberta redneck -- burly, heavily bearded, dressed in a tattered undershirt.
Media coverage described him as a "right-wing extremist" and an "active organizer of convoy protests.”
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: harassment, Chrystia Freeland, Grand Prairie, redneck
Thursday August 25, 2022
Something got me thinking about the pop songs I listened to in my youth. Here’s one of them: “Sh-boom sh-boom… yallalala lallalalala, Hey nonny ding dong, a-lang a--lang a-lang, Boom ba-doh, ba-doo ba-doodle-ay…”
The quartet went on to include some real words, but they’ve faded from memory. Only the nonsense syllables remain.
Or Sammy Kaye and his orchestra, otherwise a fairly conservative group: “Chickery chick, cha-la, cha-la, Check-a-la romey in a bananika, Bollika, wollika, can't you see, Chickery chick is me?”
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Silly songs, innocence
Sunday August 21, 2022
Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert wants the U.S. to have a “biblical citizenship” test. Was she serious? On video clips, she sounds as if it was just a casual aside.
Serious or not, it may be the stupidest idea that the U.S.’s Christian Right has come up with yet.
The first casualty would be Donald Trump. The 9th Commandment forbids lying; Trump broke it 30,573 times during his presidency!
Beyond that, though, what constitutes biblical literacy? Is it enough to know the Ten Commandments, a few choice quotations from Jesus, and the 23rd Psalm?
Or should biblical literacy mean that you can open the Bible to any page, any verse, and know how it relates to the book’s larger themes?
Tags: Bible, Boebert, citizenship, tests
Thursday August 18, 2022
I got a cat last week. Correction – last week a cat got me. Because no human owns a cat. Cats may have been the first wild creatures to co-habit with humans, but unlike dogs, they have never let humans dominate them.
My cat is only eight weeks old, but he already runs my household. Wrong again – HIS household! He determines when I shall wake up. By licking the end of my nose..
He has found his own private cave between my pillows, where he spends the night. Unless he decides to wake up long enough to walk across my head.
I expected him to play with my computer mouse – cat and mouse, you know. I didn’t expect him to take naps on my keyboard. Now I know how those computer nerds come up with weird passwords like 8[UEVrn#ds-ibJEtb&iSio&hf. They invite a kitten to pounce on their keyboards.
Tags: Dickie, kitten
Sunday August 7, 2022
You probably don’t have Monday August 15 circled on your calendar. Perhaps you should. It’s the 75th anniversary of the collapse of colonialism.
On August 15, 1947, India declared Independence.
I spent my first ten years in India. I remember standing on our hillside the summer before Independence, listening to waves of sound drifting across the forested slopes from the nearest town, as thousands chanted “Jai Hind! Jai Hind! Jai Hind!”
Loosely translated, “Victory to India!”
“What are they shouting for?” I asked my father. At ten, I was politically clueless.
“They want independence from Britain,” `he explained.
“Why?” I wondered. “Don’t they realize how good they’ve got it now?”
My father, wisely, said nothing.
Tags: India, independence, colonialism