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18
Sep
2021
Sunday September 12, 2021
With a Canadian federal election drawing near to voting day, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings, the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan and Texas, and the Delta variant running rampant through the un-vaccinated, you’d think I couldn’t run short of things to write about.
And you’d be right. There’s no lack of things to write about. The trouble is, they all weave together. Every time I start writing on one subject, I find I have to drag in another, and another. And it’s sufficiently laced with profanity that any spam filter worth its subscription price would instantly flag and quarantine the message.
So all you’re getting this week is your own responses to my 85th birthday column last week. There’s lots of reading, here, and I think you’ll enjoy the readers’ comments.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags:
Sunday September 5, 2021
I had my 85th birthday this last week. It’s a new experience for me. I’ve never had an 85th birthday before; I’ll know I’ll never have one again. Obviously.
My 85th birthday made me feel I have crossed some kind of threshold, some invisible Rubicon. I have entered a new phase of my life.
My almost-brother Ralph Milton defines it as the division between the young-old and the old-old.
The young-old are the newly retired. Without employment to tie them down, they’re free to do all those things they always wanted to do.
Almost all books and magazines about aging deal with the young-old, assuring people they can still enjoy life to the fullest.
But that doesn’t apply to the old-old. Their backs hurt too much to play golf. Their fishing buddies have died. They can’t drive. Their children want them to live where someone will look after them.
Tags: birthdays, aging, young-old, old-old
Sunday August 29, 2021
Three days left until the last western troops leave Afghanistan – unless President Joe Biden changes his mind at the last minute.
Afghanistan has been the U.S.’s longest war. Twenty years, give or take a couple of months. Longer even than Viet Nam – and with a strikingly similar ending.
Who will forget the pictures of America leaving Saigon. Helicopters lifting Americans to safety. Desperate people clinging to wheels and handles..
It was an ignominious and humiliating ending.
Likewise, who will forget footage of desperate people running along a runway beside a troop carrier the size of a freight train, hoping to hitch-hike a lift out of their country? Who will forget people clinging to the plane’s undercarriage, its doors, its fuselage, as the plane lifts off into the skies?
Tags: Afghanistan, Vietnam, humiliation
Sunday August 22, 2021
Dear God,
Why do you keep picking on Haiti?
It is, by far, the poorest country in the Americas. It has the fewest resources to recover from a disaster. It has no industries, no exports, no assets, and no hope.
Perhaps that’s overstating the situation, but only slightly. Of all the countries that could be afflicted by an earthquake, Haiti is probably the country least capable of surviving.
But you hit it with a 7.0 earthquake in 2010, which resulted in at least 20,000 deaths and left millions homeless. It’s not possible to discuss property damage, because most of the property that fell down was already falling down anyway.
Now, while it’s still recovering from the 2010 earthquake – if it ever will – you whack it with a bigger 7.2 earthquake
Tags: Haiti, earthquake
20
Aug
Sunday August 15, 2021
Another school classmate died last week. David Scott died in Washington DC August 5.
David and I went through our first six grades together at a school in the foothills of the Himalayas. Then we lost touch.
I left India with my parents, and have only been back briefly. David, on the other hand, spent most of his working life in India -- four decades with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. He was professor of history of religions in theological colleges, a chaplain, and a study-center director.
I didn’t get to know David again until I attended a school reunion some 40 years later.
Other classmates were much closer to him. So I don’t write this column deep in grief. I write it because David’s death brings into sharp focus the harsh reality of growing older. We lose friends.
Tags: aging, David Scott, friends, loss