Sep

2016

Breathe first, then swallow

I was tired and thirsty, so I pulled into our favourite American-owned Canadian fast food chain. I got a coffee. I took my double-double -- two cream, two sugar -- outside to the car. I took the first sip. And choked, spraying the inside of the windshield with streaks of beverage.

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: swallow, breathe

11

Sep

2016

Defenders of the status quo are always wrong

Author: Jim Taylor

Phyllis Schlafly died on Monday September 5. Phyllis who? Exactly. Unless you’re over 70 -- or you’re Sarah Palin -- the name Phyllis Schlafly probably draws a mental blank. Newspaper obituaries in the U.S described Schlafly as an icon of the right-wing, the woman who re-shaped American politics. Her influence continues in the Eagle Foundation based in St. Louis, Missouri. She was anti-communist. Anti-abortion. Anti-immigration. Anti- legalized same sex marriage. But above all, anti-ERA. She saw the Equal Rights Amendment as taking away women’s privileges.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: status quo

7

Sep

2016

I am the splash in the pond

Author: Jim Taylor

“I just don’t get it,” a friend told me recently. “You talk about us being stardust, about being made of the same stuff as the whole of the universe, about worshipping a cosmic God. I don’t feel connected to a galaxy out there in space somewhere.”

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: splash, pond

4

Sep

2016

Terrified rider on a runaway planet

Author: Jim Taylor

There’s a tasteless joke about an old man who died peacefully in his sleep. He just closed his eyes, took a final breath, and was gone. “That’s how I want to die,” said his son. “Not terrified and screaming, like the passengers in his car.” I’m one of those passengers, and I’m riding in a car called Earth. And I’m terrified that a bunch of drivers may be taking the planet we’re all riding on off a cliff. The driver may be Donald Trump, if he gets to be president of the most powerful nation on earth. Or it may be Bashar al Assad, who is not president of a powerful nation, but whose regime has been catalyst to a civil war that has generated the greatest flood of refugees since World War II. Or it may be the faceless CEOs of massive corporations like Exxon and Goldman Sachs, who are quite content to let the planet crash as long as they get their bonuses.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: fear, climate change, experiment

Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

Breathe first, then swallow

Defenders of the status quo are always wrong

I am the splash in the pond

Terrified rider on a runaway planet

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