The opinion of a 77-year-old white male
If any people have the right to gloat over the way they handled COVID 19 it is New Zealanders led by a youthful, female prime minister.
But the country’s PM didn’t gloat over the successful suppression of COVID 19 unless you call doing a happy dance, gloating.
Approximately 75,000 thousand years ago, the massive Toba volcano came to life in a super eruption that occurred on the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. Scientists estimate the Toba catastrophe caused a global volcanic winter that lasted between six and ten years. It produced a nearly 1,000-year-long cooling period that resulted in the human population declining to an estimated low of between 10,000 to 100,000 people. Homo sapiens almost became extinct.
I have pondered on this question for many years without coming to a resolution. Like everyone else on this planet, I am equipped with a brain that is quite an amazing machine. It runs all the various organs of my body, mostly without me having to do anything. How great is that? We don’t have to think about breathing, we just do. You get an itch, you don’t have to instruct your finger to scratch it, your brain automatically does it for you.
When you get a cut, you have all these minute white cells racing to the punctured area…
Sometimes secrets are necessary
If you think so
Sometimes they are deceitful
If you think so
A secret can be a truth
That only you should know
It can be cruel to someone you love
If you let it be so
Something hidden is not always wrong
If not disclosed, it never will heal
Opening a wound
Is an action, not always ideal
We all have dark places
Where even we do not go
Where the light of day
Should never be shown
Is this human nature? Some things best held to the breast? Or should the loved one be…
My wife and I are fortunate to live in West Vancouver, a north shore suburb of beautiful Vancouver where even in the middle of a Canadian winter we are fortunate to be surrounded by green as opposed to white like most of Canada.
In the area of West Vancouver where I live, I just have to walk across the road to access the north shore’s wonderful waterfront walk. A short stroll the other away is Ambleside Park, actually a series of parks that includes soccer and grass hockey fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a nine-hole golf course, a large doggie…
My wife and I live across the road from the waterfront walk in West Vancouver, on the North Shore of Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. A thoughtful council has provided the West Vancouver sea walk with many park benches as rest spots along its length. These little oases give strollers the opportunity to rest their legs and meditate on the great scenic eye candy that Vancouver provides. As well as the beautiful Vancouver mountains, snow-tipped in winter, there is English Bay with many sailboats and shipping coming and going, Stanly Park, (Vancouver’s answer to Central Park NY), Vancouver Island…
Twenty years ago, my wife and I became empty-nesters. We had three spare bedrooms and we decided to earn a few extra bucks by taking in some English language home-stay students. Little did we know how many doors that decision would open for us. Over a period of 5 years, we home-stayed a total of 35 students from Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and Argentina. The gender mix was pretty even and of all the students, we only had one bad apple. More on that later.
The first step was registering with an English language school in downtown Vancouver and…
Over the last year and a half, I have been plowing through a book I picked up at a rummage sale entitled The Great Dialogues of Plato. It includes the complete texts of Plato’s Republic as well as dissertations by Socrates.
I came across a passage that really struck a chord with me given the tribulations of the past four years between January 20th, 2017 and January 20th, 2021 and in particular, the period between November 3rd, 2020, and January 6th, 2021.
Before reciting the passages from the book, I should explain that the preponderance of the use of the…
Over three-quarters of a century old and still crazy about my wife. Anything wrong with that? Half the people we know are divorced and the other half are still together although terms of that togetherness vary from couple to couple. Habit, finances, crazy, scared of venturing into the unknown, etc.
I really think it helps to be a little crazy to stay sane, particularly in today's world.
Do you have unrealistic expectations? Maybe you are a little crazy. However, if eventually those expectations are realized then being crazy helped.
Getting married? I think you have to be a little crazy…
Life today is very complicated. And the Covid bug, affecting everyone’s lives has made this doubly so. When I was a young man or a younger man, well before the days of cell phones, tablets and other multi-media gadgets, it was relatively easy to go somewhere without having to check off a large list before leaving home.
All you needed were your keys for the car or fare for the bus and a few dollars in your pocket. The house key was left under the front door mat and all the relatives knew where it was kept as well as…
Since 2012, I have been business consulting and writing through my own agency Handshake Business Consultants. Fiction books, business plans, blogging, articles.