Sunday September 26, 2021

A small news item, tucked in the back pages of my newspaper, said that across the U.S. more and more people were citing “religious exemptions” to avoid -- well, to avoid almost anything they don’t like.

            The current issue is COVID-19 vaccinations. In the past, the “religious exemption” has been used by employers to exclude abortion and family planning from health plans. To refuse to hire gays and lesbians. To reject same-sex marriages.

            And so on.

            According to Associated Press, “Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country… are becoming a much more widely used loophole…”

Sunday September 19, 2021

We’ve had a vaccination passport for slightly under a week here in B.C. Obviously, it’s causing problems for the stores and restaurants that have to check patrons at the door – especially when some of those patrons, who should know better, verbally abuse a high school kid 30 years their junior.

           Lest there be any doubt where I stand on this issue, I have no sympathy for the protest mobs that have travelled – sometimes right across the country – to demonstrate in front of hospitals and medical clinics.  

            Protest at political rallies if you will – though I wish you wouldn’t. But you’ve gone too far when you start harassing healthcare workers already on the thin edge of burnout after 18 months of busting their butts to save patients from a disease that you claim doesn’t exist. 

            Your actions wipe out any tolerance I used to have for you. 

Sunday September 12, 2021

With a Canadian federal election drawing near to voting day, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings, the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan and Texas, and the Delta variant running rampant through the un-vaccinated, you’d think I couldn’t run short of things to write about.

            And you’d be right. There’s no lack of things to write about. The trouble is, they all weave together. Every time I start writing on one subject, I find I have to drag in another, and another. And it’s sufficiently laced with profanity that any spam filter worth its subscription price would instantly flag and quarantine the message.

            So all you’re getting this week is your own responses to my 85th birthday column last week. There’s lots of reading, here, and I think you’ll enjoy the readers’ comments.

Sunday September 5, 2021

I had my 85th birthday this last week. It’s a new experience for me. I’ve never had an 85th birthday before; I’ll know I’ll never have one again. Obviously.

           My 85th birthday made me feel I have crossed some kind of threshold, some invisible Rubicon. I have entered a new phase of my life.

            My almost-brother Ralph Milton defines it as the division between the young-old and the old-old.

            The young-old are the newly retired. Without employment to tie them down, they’re free to do all those things they always wanted to do. 

            Almost all books and magazines about aging deal with the young-old, assuring people they can still enjoy life to the fullest. 

            But that doesn’t apply to the old-old. Their backs hurt too much to play golf. Their fishing buddies have died. They can’t drive. Their children want them to live where someone will look after them.

Sunday August 29, 2021

Three days left until the last western troops leave Afghanistan – unless President Joe Biden changes his mind at the last minute. 

            Afghanistan has been the U.S.’s longest war. Twenty years, give or take a couple of months. Longer even than Viet Nam – and with a strikingly similar ending. 

            Who will forget the pictures of America leaving Saigon. Helicopters lifting Americans to safety. Desperate people clinging to wheels and handles.. 

            It was an ignominious and humiliating ending. 

            Likewise, who will forget footage of desperate people running along a runway beside a troop carrier the size of a freight train, hoping to hitch-hike a lift out of their country? Who will forget people clinging to the plane’s undercarriage, its doors, its fuselage, as the plane lifts off into the skies?