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28
Feb
2020
How could I resist a book sub-titled, A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures?
I’ve been a fan of mountain climbing ever since my early years in the foothills of India’s Himalayas. Until you’ve done it, it’s hard to imagine the sheer awe of cresting a ridge and seeing a range of 25,000-foot mountains rising across the sky.
But “Non-Euclidian” mountaineering?
It’s because author Rene Daumal’s mountain, Mount Analogue, is imaginary. It gives him the opportunity to use mountaineering wisdom to illuminate ordinary life.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: gods, Mountains, Rene Daumal
23
For a writer, it’s almost freeing to know that anything I say about the Wet’suwet’en affair will be denounced by someone as wrong, misguided, misleading, and/or prejudiced.
After all, this single issue combines aboriginal rights, colonial injustice, social stereotyping, racial discrimination, capitalism, fossil fuels, the law, the economy, global warming, global trade, and the rights of nature. How could it help being divisive?
And yet at the heart of it stand just nine men -- the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en people in northern B.C.
A natural gas pipeline running from Dawson Creek to Kitimat on the B.C. coast would have to pass through Wet’suwet’en territory.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: pipelines, Wet'suwet'en, Coastal GasLink, blockades
22
My granddaughter is black – adopted, from Ethiopia. She lives in a mostly white community and school system.
Her school, I gather, has largely ignored February as Black History Month.
Granted, Black History would not teach her much about Ethiopia. Or even about Africa. Black History, from what I’ve seen, deals mainly with American slavery.
Slavery is not limited to American experience, of course. For centuries, all over the world, slaves were property. The mighty could measure their wealth by the number of slaves.
Until recently, the stories of American slavery were not transcribed into words. They were handed down orally. Just as Indigenous stories were. Just as biblical stories were.
Tags: Slavery, Black history, Oscar Peterson, jazz
18
My wife Joan has been handling the gradual decline of her life with astonishing composure. But occasionally, the veneer cracks, and I realize how fragile she is, physically and emotionally. I try to imagine myself into her experience, and can’t – inevitably, I drift off into my story, not hers.
So as once before, I’ve chosen the ruthless structure of classical haiku – three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables – to enforce some discipline on my monkey mind.
Walking on water
ice fractures under my feet
fall into nothing
Categories: Poetry
Tags: dying, death, unknown
16
My wife and I watch Jeopardy, most evenings, for three reasons. Its host is Alex Trebek, a Canadian. It involves knowledge and intelligence. And it has no guns.
But Jeopardy is not on any Canadian channel in our area. We have to watch it on Seattle’s KOMO. Which means that we’re suddenly seeing several advertisements every hour for Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to become U.S. president.
Apparently Bloomberg has already spent $350 million U.S. on advertising. That’s about ten times more than Bernie Sanders has spent, so far.
And there’s still most of a year to go.
Tags: election, Bloomberg, billionaire