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12
Nov
2022
Sunday November 6, 2022
I’d better say this tight up front – I have never experienced prejudice against me because I am white. I suspect that no “person of colour” can say the same.
I have travelled widely. I have spent time in, by my last count, 66 different countries. In many of those, the local population had darker skin than mine. I have never been told, “Hey, whitey, go to the back of the line.” Or, “This is where WE eat; what are you doing here?”
And if anyone has called me derogatory names, they did it in their own language, and I didn’t know.
You may protest that you have no prejudice against brown- or black-skinned people. You may really believe that. But you cannot know it. Only the person experiencing prejudice knows it.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: racism, Prejudice
Thursday November 3, 2022
Another Halloween has come and gone. We’ve sent our children out into the darkness of night dressed as skeletons or mummies, ghouls and ghosties, and other things that go bump in the night.
Now the costumes have been put away for another year.
And I wonder what’s special about Halloween that we’re dressing up our kids for.
There was a time, of course, when people actually believed that the souls of the dead rose up from their graves and roamed the streets. The whole premise of Dickens’ Christmas Carol relies on Scrooge believing that dead still have a presence among us.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Hallowe'en, ghosts
Thursday October 27, 2022
Ahah, I thought, that’s what used to happen to my wife Joan. She was smart. She was tough. She ran a department with 40 staff. She handled the sale of one church property and the purchase of another, despite all the impediments that two levels of government could throw at her.
But she hated exams.
Tags: Coleman, Social Intelligence, exams
Sunday October 23, 2022
Such a miracle is the salmon!
Of the 4,000 or so eggs that a female sockeye deposits in the Adams River, B.C.’s most famous salmon run, only two will survive long enough to start a new generation.
There’s a salmon run every year. Every fourth year, though, is the biggest run.
A week ago, I drove up to the Adams River to see what was supposed to be a banner year, a dominant year.
I’ve been there before for a dominant year. So many salmon were packed together, each one seeking the best grovel for spawning, that I felt I could walk across the river on their backs.
Not this year.
Tags: climate change, Salmon, Sockeye, Adams River
Thursday October 20, 2022
The universe will be 6026 years old this weekend. According to Irish Archbishop James Ussher, in 1650, the universe began on October 23, 4004 BCE (Before Christian Era).
It’s easy to make fun of Ussher. Years ago, I had a part in the play Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized treatment of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925.
During one rehearsal, the actor portraying prosecutor Matthew Brady declared, in a voice like God playing Spencer Tracy, that the earth had been created at “precisely 9:00 a.m.”
And a voice from the audience cracked, “9:30 in Newfoundland…”
The cast erupted in laughter.
Tags: creation, Ussher, 4004 BC