Feb

2016

Confessions of a CBC addict

My name is Jim, and I listen to the CBC. It didn’t start that way. When I was young, my parents listened to the CBC, so of course I didn’t. Because I grew up in Vancouver, I listened to Red Robinson. I coveted Jack Cullen’s enormous personal library of 78-rpm records. My first full-time job was in private radio. The CBC was our publicly-funded enemy. That all changed when I got a job as program producer for a tiny CBC station in Prince Rupert, on B.C.’s north coast. With only 250 watts of power, its signal barely reached beyond the city limits. But it was the only radio station for 100 miles. There was nothing else to listen to. And I began to discover two things – the wealth of thought that went into CBC programs, and the motivation that drove them.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: CBC

Jan

2016

Missionary fervour bites back

Author: Jim Taylor

It didn’t make many headlines, but the conservative wing of the worldwide Anglican church flexed its muscles about a week ago. It gagged the Episcopalian Church U.S.A. A gathering of 38 primates – the leaders of 44 national churches – in Canterbury, England, effectively excommunicated their American kin. For the next three years, the U.S. church may not represent the Anglican church on ecumenical or interfaith bodies, may not participate in any international Anglican committees, and may not vote “on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity…” I’m tempted to invoke an analogy to biblical eunuchs. On the surface, the issue is homosexuality. African bishops were incensed by the U.S. church’s election of a gay priest, Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The U.S. church then heaped insult on top of injury, last summer, by approving a rite for same-sex marriages.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: missionary fervour

Jan

2016

Mental mindsets of political positions

Author: Jim Taylor

I watch the U.S. political scene from north of the border, and wonder who writes the script. Lewis Carroll, with Donald Trump playing the Queen of Hearts who wants to cut off everyone’s head? Franz Kafka, with a bewildered everyman trying to penetrate a nightmare labyrinth of misinformation, contradictions, and downright lies? J.K. Rowling, creating a parallel world that mere muggles can never comprehend? Even they would be hard-pressed, I think, to imagine a situation where a presidential candidate deliberately alienates the ethnic and religious nations he’d have to negotiate with if elected. Where a handful of armed rebels dare the feds to re-enact Waco. Where a gunman kills three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic and gets praised for saving lives. The logic escapes me.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: politics, mindsets

Jan

2016

Spontaneous collaboration at work

Author: Jim Taylor

In an earlier column, I wrote about five years of effort by the Rotary Club of Lake Country to provide the Lake Country Food Bank with a permanent new home. The ceremony for turning over the keys to the new building took place on Wednesday. Like many things, the planning started so simply. The ceremony was originally scheduled for December 23, as a Christmas present for Food Bank founder, Phyllis MacPherson. That plan got abruptly postponed when Phyllis died four nights before.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: collaboration, work

Jan

2016

From improbable beginnings, big results

Author: Jim Taylor

You never know what you may be starting. Sometime in the late 1970s -- no one now remembers exactly when -- a tiny but indomitable woman named Phyllis McPherson began supplying food to struggling individuals in Lake Country. The Lake Country Food Assistance Society must have operated informally for some time before it achieved charitable registration October 25, 1988. Her food bank was a temporary effort. The economy was slumping. People needed help. So Phyllis offered it. In the beginning, she and a few friends worked out of her house. Then out of a rented house. Then out of a series of short-term facilities. But the need never ended.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: beginnings, results

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

Confessions of a CBC addict

Missionary fervour bites back

Mental mindsets of political positions

Spontaneous collaboration at work

From improbable beginnings, big results

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