To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
7
Feb
2021
People all around the world watched the inauguration of the new president of the United States of America.
Most of us, I expect, watched mainly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We watched Biden take his oath of office with his hand on a family Bible.
Biden is only the second Roman Catholic president; the first was John Kennedy. That speaks volumes about the dominance of one branch of Christian religion in American politics.
We watched Kamala Harris’s radiant smile as she became, not just the first non-white woman to be vice-president, but the first woman. Period. That too speaks volumes about American politics.
But I wonder how many of us watched the troops, occasionally visible in the background.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Biden, Harris, Inauguration
We had a mighty wind one night. It sounded like a freight train rumbling by outside – loud enough that I assumed the snowplow must be coming down our street, dragging its blade along the pavement.
But it wasn’t.
When I woke, I looked outside. No snow.
The house was eerily quiet. And chilly.
No power. No light. No heat.
And no phone. Not even the hard-wired landline had a dial tone.
Plus, the battery on my cell phone was down; I couldn’t recharge it.
No internet, no email – the cable modem needs plug-in power.
I thought I could at least have a shower. No water.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: light, water, power
17
Jan
It was Friday January 1, 2021. New Year’s Day. I thought I should start the new year by tackling some old business.
For the last 20 years, Joan stored her growing collection of murder mysteries in our spare bedroom. One set of books caught my eye – by P.D. James, the undisputed queen of British murder mystery writers. A publisher’s promo calls her the author of 11 books, but I counted 20.
Including her one foray into science fiction, The Children of Men, published in 1992.
I had never read it before. I opened the book. On Friday the first of January, 2021, the opening words were, “Friday 1 January 2021.”
What were the odds, I wondered, that Ms James would have chosen to start a book published 28 years ago with the very date on which I would open that book?
Tags: probability, P.D. James, coincidence
The world watched last week as a mindless mob took over the U.S. Capitol.
It was not an attempted coup, as many pundits alleged. If it were a coup, they would have been much better organized.
This gang had no plans beyond disrupting Congress. Desecrating the temple of government. Looting a few souvenirs. Putting their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
For a second or two, those TV cameras caught a woman brandishing a placard: “Jesus Saves.”
There, I think, is the overlooked key to this demonstration.
At last count, 82 people had been arrested and 13 charged, as a result of the riot. When – and if – they come to trial, I expect that some will invoke religious freedom as their defence.
They were only doing what Jesus did, they’ll argue, when he cleared the crooks and shysters from a courtyard of his temple in Jerusalem. He didn’t attempt to take over the temple either. He shut it down for a while, then cleared out. He had made his point.
Tags: riot, Capitol, insurgents
9
Sunday January 10, 2021
Years ago, I started writing a summary of the good things and bad things that had happened that year.
At first, I had little difficulty separating good from bad. My two lists – good and bad – bore little connection to each other.
But as time passed, I discovered that different aspects of the same situations were showing up in both lists.
This year, the overlap is almost total. Bad things occurred, certainly, but part of each parcel included good things. And vice versa. Like Frank Sinatra singing about love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other.
Take Donald Trump. Please. (A line borrowed from stand-up comedy.)
How can his behaviour be a ”good thing”?
Easy -- he proved I was right about him, all along. (I never said that the good and bad had to be equal, only that they were intertwined!)
Tags: Trump, extremes, good/bad