This pandemic’s stay in place imperative or suggestion is beginning to wear thin with me and others that I know. We are hard-pressed to even get out of the house to run the shortest of errands. We are currently getting three weeks to a gallon of gas. This travel quarantine is not just local but national and global. We’ve had to cancel at least a couple of bucket-list trips abroad that were previously planned. Travelling is one of our passions, and this thing is stifling our human need for galavanting from hither to thither and beyond. When I was a […]
Legacy of a Lie
Born in India, Rudyard Kipling epitomized the pomp and circumstance of England’s global imperialism. Some of his memorable writings include The Jungle Book, Gunga Din, and his powerful poem If: If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,/ If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…/ Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies/ Or being hated don’t give way to hating… Rudyard was also a vital part of the “military-industrial complex” of his day before Eisenhower coined that warning for us all. The Boer War was pivotal […]
At Each Others’ Mercy
This pandemic and the world-wide demonstrations for racial justice dramatically illustrate just how we are so precariously at the mercy of each other. This mercy not only operates close to home but far and wide, like a world-wide web. What happened on a curb in Minneapolis put protestors in the streets of London. How we operate within our personal sphere will have a significant influence on what happens elsewhere beyond our imagining. Keeping our distance and wearing a mask not only protects you from the virus but protects those around you from any contagion you may have. All of this […]
If Tomorrow Never Comes
In his classic love song, “If Tomorrow Never Comes”, Garth Brooks knows how to cut to the chase in his music to help us see some of the most important stardust on which we tread daily. In an uncanny fashion, his song poses the same conundrum as the scary childhood prayer some of us dared utter before bedtime: “If I should die before I wake…” The song and the prayer remind us of the tenious nature our life’s timeline and imply a goodness in the past that will stand us good in the unknown tomorrow that might never come. That […]