To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
17
Nov
2019
So Don Cherry got fired. About time. The man has been his own fireworks factory for 38 years. Then he lit one incendiary match too many.
He failed to realize that once you become public property, you lose the privileges of individuality. You can no longer claim the liberty to speak for yourself.
Like everyone else, Don Cherry is entitled to express his own opinions -- within his own circle. But Coach’s Corner on Hockey Night in Canada is probably the most public pulpit in the country.
Cherry has been a fixture on Hockey Night in Canada for 38 years. Initially, having been fired as coach of the Boston Bruins, he limited his commentary to hockey tactics.
But he soon used Coach’s Corner as a soapbox to sound off about social issues.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Don Cherry, freedom of speech, Hockey Night in Canada
13
The TV news was mumbling away in the background, when a name surfaced — Tim Berners-Lee.
Several decades ago, Berners-Lee was idolized. While a scientist with the CERN large hadron collider in Switzerland, he developed a system that enabled computers to talk to each other.
Officially it was called “hypertext transfer protocol” -- the “http” in internet addresses. More commonly, it’s called the Web, short for World Wide Web – the “www” in internet addresses.
The Web has not only changed communication, it has given theology a valuable new metaphor. Yes, theology, although I suspect that was the last thing on Sir Tim’s mind.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Berners-Lee, Internet, Web, metaphors
10
You’re in your car, let’s say. You pull up to the intersection. You stop. You look both ways. The road seems clear. You pull ahead and --
Ka-wham! An enormous force smashes into you. You’re spun around, tossed like a rag doll in a Rottweiler’s jaws. You look up at the radiator of the logging truck that’s crushing your car, and you, into a cube of crumpled metal. Just before a black wave of pain and shock washes over your senses, you ask yourself: “Why didn’t I see that coming?”
A car crash serves as a metaphor for other shocks.
The firm where you’ve worked loyally for 35 years tells you to clear out your desk. Your spouse hands you a package of divorce papers. Your doctor looks at the test results, sucks her teeth, and says, “It’s cancer. Stage IV already…”
At times like these, your first reaction is often, “Why didn’t I see it coming?” How could I miss the warning signs? How did I kid myself that even if I saw the signs, they wouldn’t affect me?
Thirty years from now, I imagine a lot of people will look back at the early decades of this millennium and ask themselves those same questions.
Tags: climate change, BioScience, warnings
6
In one section of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s best seller from ten years ago, she describes being taught Balinese meditation. She had just spent four months in India learning -- sometimes painfully -- Yoga meditation. Physical postures that had to be learned, and held, until her joints begged for mercy. Endless Sanskrit texts that had to be memorized and repeated, endlessly.
But her guru in Bali simply said, “Smile.”
At first, it seemed far too simple. Yet, as she thought about it, his advice made sense to her. It was the Balinese attitude, she thought. Smile. Always smile. Always face the world cheerfully.
All great truths seems to have a core of simplicity; all simple statements contain a grain of truth. Not necessarily the whole truth. But a grain of truth, somewhere.
The underlying truth to her guru’s instruction was that you receive whatever you are tuned to.
Tags: tuning, radios, frequency
3
The days have gone, thank God, when we simply couldn’t talk about mental illness. When families had a dotty aunt whom they hid in a suite in the back of the ancestral home. When the errant son who got into trouble was written off, banished, never mentioned again.
It wasn’t that long ago, though, when anybody with a disability was shipped off to a separate school for the blind or the deaf. When mental illness wasn’t even considered a disability -- it was a disgrace that reflected badly upon the family.
It’s not that way anymore. But yes it still is.
When someone breaks a bone, gets an infected tooth, or has surgery to remove an appendix, we don’t think any less of that person for their “illness.” But a diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or autism instantly diminishes that person’s value.
Tags: mental illness, TGA, amnesia