To thine own self be true

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world
Become a place in which our children
Can grow free and strong

We are bound together by the task
That stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound, and we are bound

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps
The heart will never rest

Shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
So that we can see, oh yeah
Just a little light, oh Lord. (just a little light, oh Lord)
Want to stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh Lord (stand it on up, Lord)
Want to walk it on down
Gonna shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)

Can’t get no light from a dollar bill
(Don’t see me no light from a dollar bill)
Don’t give me no light from a TV screen, oh no, no
When I open my eyes, I want to drink my fill
From the well on the hill
I know you know what I mean

Shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
So that we can see, oh yeah
Just a little light, oh Lord (just a little light, oh Lord)
Want to stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh Lord (stand it on up, oh Lord)
Stand on up, Lord
Want to walk it on down
Gonna shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
Shed a little light, Lord

There’s a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest, oh yes
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps
The heart will never rest

Oh, Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

“….And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

—A.E. Housman

(Used in Nicolas Roeg’s brilliant masterpiece to summarize the teen girl’s and her young brother’s transition from innocence to experience, but, ironically, also the Aboriginal boy’s loss of his cultural ways, and beyond that, the loss of other earlier, more nature-based cultures)

Not I.

Scrabble has long been my favorite word game since grade 11, 56 years ago. A good party game before the pandemic.

More recently, I’ve begun doing my late mother’s Jumble books. I can see why she considered this game a good mental/linguistic workout from the 1950s to her passing in 2008.

Lies, two-facedness, phoniness.

“Sure everybody, you don’t need N95s to survive out there in schools and at work.

But I do. I’m extremely special. Privileged, baby.”

*Every bit as hypocritical as Boris Johnson’s controversial booze parties while laying down opposite rules for his society.

Hinshaw is cold and psychopathic in her tone and pronouncements, totally unlike the much-better, kinder, more genuine Bonnie Henry in BC, for example. She is the totally indifferent, uncaring face of Health in AB for Kenney and the UCP.

around the world in her light plane and is soon reaching her final destination in Belgium is another positive sign of changing limits for young women. This, in total contrast to the bimbo party girls vaping it up on the holiday plane getaway a couple of weeks ago..

It was often pointed out to William Golding that his characters in Lord of Flies could/might have been female with much the same results and I think there’s some truth in that. A good debate topic for sure.

Women and girls can behave very badly, as Shakespeare noted in King Lear and Macbeth, and there are even women desperate enough to kill their new offspring or young families out there (c.f. the news).

But women and girls are, more predictably often than not, capable of incredible, sacrificing, and pro-society/pro-others work. Think of Jane Goodall and Greta Thunberg, for instance. And, quite often, the people leading the charge on the charity front since the 19th century have been women. (I suspect the number of women on the front lines of the dangerous, exhausting Covid hospital front have been women by something like 8 to 1.)

I have long talked about the dualism of human nature and man, which definitely includes women. Which makes me and many others appreciate even more those inspiring and heroic girls and women from the West and East who have been breaking through glass ceilings and smashing the former limits and limitations that have unfairly hindered women much too long in herstory/history. This is their time and long overdue on the road to lasting, meaningful change and equality.

recalls an episode of the Somerset Maugham story tv series which I’d seen back in the summer of ’71 in which a traveller to a South sea island had an earwig (The story is called “The Earwig”) in his ear, starring Laurence Harvey. He endures great agony and is finally told that the only resolution, since the earwig burrows forward and inward, is for it to come out the other ear! Sufficiently gruesome, but I suspect–based on the Aussie story–it was likely based on truth and Maugham fictionalized and dramatized it, no doubt.

of Shakespeare’s First folio, arguably the greatest printed first edition work/s of literature in Western civilization. At U of T and at UBC (just acquired).

There is absolutely no question that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who’s ever lived and there will never be another literary giant like him again.

(an interesting recent acquisition here–hear how his words were pronounced by actors of his time)

Taxing the unvaccinated.

In Alberta, I seriously doubt Kenney would do anything to upset his remaining redneck  (11%) base.