To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
19
Nov
2021
Thursday November 18, 2021
As I grow older, I realize how much friends matter.
I didn’t always feel that way. Friends came into my life; friends passed out of my life. I moved on and left the old friends behind.
There always seemed to be enough friends around.
Not any more. Far too many friends have died. Others still live, but too little contact and too many years mean the only thing we have in common now is youthful memories.
Author Frederik Buechner understood the importance of friends better than I did. In his book Whistling the Dark, he wrote: “Your friends are not your friends for any particular reason. They are your friends for no particular reason. The job you do, the family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of them, are all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get together."
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Senses, Remembrance Day, peace
14
Thursday December 11, 2021
I don’t feel qualified to write about Remembrance Day. I’ve never served in any war.
Two uncles did serve. My uncle Andy was chief surgeon with the British Army’s retreat from Burma – a 1000-mile retreat that makes Dunkirk look like child’s play in a bathtub. But I won’t go into details.
Joan’s uncle Frank died in Italy during WWII. Joan was about five. What she remembers, most, was the smell of his rough wool serge uniform, when he picked her up for a goodbye hug.
She never saw him again.
And she could never stand the smell of serge or the colour khaki.
In the context of today, Remembrance Day 2021, I wonder how our senses would recognize peace.
8
Thursday December 4, 2021
The bus ahead of me stopped at the roadside. A stream of young children gushed out the door onto the grass. After the last child, the shepherding adults got off.
By then the kids were celebrating their freedom from confinement. They flung their backpacks on the ground. They romped around in wild disarray.
The driver no longer had any responsibility for them.
But the driver didn’t leave. The bus waited. Long enough to form a protective barrier between the kids and any passing cars. Just long enough to make sure the adults had their flock under control.
Then, and only then, with a squish of air, the doors closed, the brakes released, the bus resumed its route.
Tags: Buber, bus driver, I-thou
29
Oct
Thursday October 28, 2021
I am awash in provenance.
In the art world, provenance identifies the origins of artwork. The art could be a painting, a statue, a piece of music or literature. Often, provenance enhances the value of a work of art. Mozart’s Requiem takes on special status when you know that Salieri wrote it out for a dying Mozart – at least, according to the movie Amadeus.
That’s why art galleries provide information about the artist, and about the history of that piece.
In my case, I have too much provenance. My daughter and I are the only leaves left of four family trees.
Everything funnelled down to us has a story.
Tags: stories, Art, provenance, legacy
23
Thursday October 21, 2021
I can tell how old you are, without asking. I merely have to cite three words: “Fibber McGee’s closet.”
Did you smile? Even laugh out loud?
Then you’re probably over 80.
Fibber McGee, for those of you with blank looks on your faces, was a radio program of the 1940s and parts of the 1950s. It featured the improbably named Fibber McGee. Who put everything he didn’t know what to do with into his closet. So, naturally, every time he opened his closet door, several hundred pots and pans and other clanging things came crashing out.
Tags: comic strips, radio shows, synapses, memoirs