Oct

2023

Nobody ever wins a war

Sunday Feb. 26, 2023

As of Friday, the war in Ukraine has been going on for one year. It seems to me this is the first war of its kind – a World War fought within a single country.
I call it a “world war” because of the number of countries involved. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, currently has 30 member nations. And they’re all backing Ukraine, one way or another.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

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24

Mar

2023

We make coincidences happen

Author: Jim Taylor

Thursday February 23, 2023

Just a year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. The date sticks in my mind because, by some coincidence, on the same day I had to have my dog Pippin euthanized.
In hindsight, she was acting too much like Vladimir Putin. Increasingly aggressive, and increasingly irrational about the objects of her aggression.
Coincidences like that help us remember things. If we can remember one half of the equation, it helps us remember the other half.

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Categories: Soft Edges

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24

Mar

2023

Who benefits from hospital visits?

Author: Jim Taylor

Thursday February 9, 2023

Some people do hospital visiting as easily as eggs roll off counters. I don’t -- the same way I don’t do windows. Or go door-knocking in political campaigns. I can, but I avoid it.
My dislike of hospital visiting might derive from having made most of my hospital visits to dying people -- my mother, my father, my son, my wife…
During the year I served a Toronto congregation as a “pastoral associate” – a fancy description for a lay person filling a clergy role – one of my duties was hospital visiting. I had to force myself to do it.

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Categories: Soft Edges

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24

Mar

2023

Nothing to say

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday February 19, 2023

I didn’t send out a Sharp Edges column this weekend. This is the explanation why.
I had planned to write about 68-year-old Toronto Mayor John Tory’s affair with a 31-year-old female staff member. And I discovered I had nothing to say.
Except, perhaps, that Tory’s embarrassment proves – as if proof were needed – that for someone in the public eye, there’s no such thing as safe sex.

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24

Mar

2023

Have a heart! Donate blood or plasma!

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday February 5, 2023

I give blood at the Canadian Blood Services clinic here in Kelowna every two weeks. Correction – I give plasma every two weeks. If I gave whole blood -- as I did for many years, until Canada’s tainted blood scandal forced rule changes that made anyone who had ever had malaria ineligible – my donations would have to be 56 days apart, to give my body time to replenish those donated blood cells.
But when I give plasma, they give me back my blood cells. All I need to replenish is fluids.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

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

Nobody ever wins a war

We make coincidences happen

Who benefits from hospital visits?

Nothing to say

Have a heart! Donate blood or plasma!

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