To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
25
Nov
2022
Thursday November 17, 2022
IMy email friend and fellow blogger Jim Henderschedt listed a number of things going wrong: “The seemingly daily news of war, lies, assault weapons, muck raking, genocide, racial enmity, mass shootings, homelessness -- the list goes on and on...”
What do you do when your world seems to be coming apart at the seams? When your dreams turn into nightmares? When old friends topple like bowling pins, and your investments sink like autumn leaves?
It’s tempting to go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head. Or perhaps to curl up on the floor in a fetal position.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: prayer, News, helplessness, thief
Sunday November 13, 2022
Final results in the U.S. mid-term elections may not be in for some weeks. But the political pundits are having a field day finding things to analyse.
I dare suggest that some of them have read the election wrong. This election was not about abortion rights. Or about immigration, racial discrimination, or inflation.
It was not even – despite Joe Biden’s and Barrack Obama’s impassioned last-minute pleas – about the survival of democracy.
It was about one thing -- Donald Trump.
Tags: Trump, Elections, mid-term, conservative values
12
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.
Tags: racism, Prejudice
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
18
Oct
Sunday October 16, 2022
It was painful, watching Andrea Skinner, the interim chair of Hockey Canada’s Board of Directors, as the Parliamentary Committee on Canadian Heritage grilled her mercilessly about charges that Hockey Canada had covered up a gang rape.
Skinner squirmed like a worm impaled on a hook as she tried to defend the indefensible.
I don’t need to go into the details. In broad terms, as everyone now knows, Hockey Canada paid out $8.9 million as hush money for 21 sexual assault accusations since 1989.
Tags: Hockey Canada, sexual assault, cover-up