As a former broadcast journalist, what I’m about to confess amounts to heresy: at the moment I neither have, nor miss having, a TV set. That’s due in no small part to being where more intimate and gentle ways measure and put the world into perspective.… Read the rest
Paddling my kayak along the granite shore of the lake where I currently reside, I came upon a small group of young merganser ducks. They may, or may not, have been siblings. Mergansers have a characteristic that is common among humans who have the least to share and sadly, often rare among those who have more than enough.… Read the rest
Of the many aphorisms on hindsight, the one which ought to be the truest was penned by the ancient Greek writer Homer: “After the event, even a fool is wise.” Too often and albeit for different reasons, policy makers and journalists have an ability to be the exception. One of the most sinister examples is jihadism and I was, in a small way, part of it.… Read the rest
For decades famine, drought, strife and corruption have been so common in parts of Africa that outsiders could, to an extent, be excused for seeing them as normal. It is well past time on many levels for the comfortable complacency of willful ignorance to give way to a harsh reality; the divide between “them” and “us” has been well and truly breached.… Read the rest
One of the many joys of summer beside a forest-encircled lake is that unlike every moment of every day in “normal” life, your privacy is respected. The welcome exception is a chipmunk, who appears, unbidden and insistent, for a handout of nuts. When cheek pouches are on the point of bursting , he/she (gender assignment is nigh on impossible with chippies) darts off to store them deep in a hidden den.… Read the rest
Nothing so neatly epitomises how skewed priorities have become as the “Barbenheimer” movie delirium. If the gush of praise, analysis and other commentary is any indication, a doll and a shade of pink embody deep lessons and cultural significance. The other half of the conjoined title ought to be an admonition of how little progress Western culture has made since inventing the means to destroy it and pretty much everything else.… Read the rest
In a world beset by a seemingly ever-metastasising Pandora’s box of life-altering, if not ending threats, for those with the means and responsibility of eliminating, or at the very least ameliorating them, the French philosopher Voltaire offers a worthy piece of advice: “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”… Read the rest
Trying not to dwell on the state of the world is well nigh impossible, but limiting contemplation seems to me to be essential for sanity, not least because the growing list of conundrums covers the gamut from naïve, through shameful to ridiculous.… Read the rest
The trajectory being pretty much set and relentlessly shortening, it seems to me that we who are aging ought to be granted freedom from an excess of choices. Instead, we get a seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of advice on how to have a longer and healthier, and ergo, happier life. So far, all I’ve learned from it is summed up by screenwriter William Goldman’s description of the movie business: “Nobody knows anything…Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”… Read the rest
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BC) wrote: “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” For those whose participation includes choosing from the bloating melange of mediocrity being offered for the upcoming effort to preserve American democracy, it might help to apply the Latin word, “colligere , the origin of the word “cull”.… Read the rest