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27
Sep
2020
Lots of people don’t like Donald Trump. But few dislike him enough to mail him an envelope containing a powder identified as ricin.
Ricin, despite the sound of its name, has nothing to do with rice. It comes from castor beans. Also the source of castor oil. If your mother gave you a dose of castor oil to cure various ailments when you were a child, you may consider that quite toxic enough.
But castor oil itself contains no ricin. The ricin is refined from the stuff left after all the oil is squeezed out of the crushed beans.
And it can be deadly.
Experts lined up on TV to remind everyone that a single pinhead-size granule would be enough to kill you. At one time, both the U.S. and Canada considered developing ricin as a chemical weapon. It’s as deadly as sarin, the nerve gas developed by the Nazis and used in terrorist attacks in Tokyo subway system in 1995.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: poison, ricin, Ferrier
20
I sing in a church choir. Correction: I used to sing in a church choir. Further correction: I used to sing, once upon a time…
Singing has fallen victim to the Covid-19 pandemic. When health regulations prohibited large gatherings, and when physical distancing precluded even small groups from getting together, choirs everywhere had to shut down.
My church chose to move its Sunday services to Zoom. Zoom is a wonderful platform. But you can’t sing together on Zoom.
On our first attempts at singing over Zoom, some singers ended a full line after the pianist had finished. It was chaos. Definitely not a unifying effect.
So we tried having just one person singing the words, while everyone else had their microphones muted. A few weeks back, I was the congregation’s “designated singer.” I did not like the sound of my voice. It felt raw, uncertain. I struggled to stay on key.
I realized I hadn’t done any vocal exercises. to warm up. I should have done at least ten minutes.
More than that, I hadn’t done any singing at all for several weeks. Not even in the shower.
Tags: singing, worship, choirs
18
A month or so ago, I was watching a TV program where aging artists sang the songs that made them famous, and somehow they sounded just as good as when their vocal cords were 60 years younger.
I have a particular affection for the music of the 1950s and early ‘60s. I was young then; I was healthy; everything was possible; the whole world opened up before me.
I embodied the Les Paul and Mary Ford song, “I’m sittin’ on top of the world.”
So I ordered the six CD set.
I was disappointed.
My disappointment, I realize, rises not from the discs themselves, but from my expectations of them.
Indeed, when I think about it, most of my disappointments in life have resulted from flawed expectations.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: music, pop songs, 1950s
10
What good are memories when there’s no one who shares them? Or cares about them? And yet roses do bloom in December, because memories are sometimes just as real as reality, and so my mother’s knitting needles still click as they knit my sweaters and socks. My dark road unfurls ahead, leading who knows where, over the hills and far away, because the granddaughter who once rode my ankle to the bounce of a cock horse going to Banbury Cross has gone away too, and my empty arms can still feel rocking her through the black pit of an Ethiopian night.
My baggage brims over with memories, transcending time. Some hurt. Still, I’m grateful each time the wisps of fog pull aside and let me re-live the past.
Tags: memories, fog
6
Black people in the U.S. Indigenous people in Canada. Jews in Germany, during Nazi rule. Japanese on the west coast during WII. Doukhobors in the 1950s.
If you’re not one of them, it’s almost impossible to imagine what it’s like to be one of them.
But suppose people who share your faith and your beliefs were being persecuted? Could you identify with them?
Such as Christians in India.
In Canada, we treat Christianity as the norm.
But what would it feel like if the Christian culture you take for granted turned you into a persecuted minority
Tags: India, Persecution Relief, Christians