Don't pay the ferry-man

Yesterday, we took the Glenora ferry to the mainland. Our intent was to drive to Kingston, get on the ferry to Wolfe Island, and just see what was there. We got as far as Kingston. When we saw that there was an hour and a half wait, we collectively thought about all the shops we'd seen on Princess Street in Kingston.

My Dad and I wandered into the Army Surplus store. He hates the military, primarily because he served in it when he was young. But he has always been fascinated by Army Surplus stores. He waxes quite nostalgic about his RMC days, for a guy who was not happy to be there. :-)

I go into military surplus stores because you can buy rugged clothes for working outdoors at a tiny fraction of the cost you'd get going to some outfitters, let alone Roots (who would wear expensive brand name Roots wear when chopping down dead trees for firewood?)

After that, we wandered over to the music store. I picked up a guitar tuner - I normally use this huge old box tuner, and I wanted one I could put in my pocket. My Dad, who only recently picked up the guitar again,  asked if they had songbooks. The fellow working there said no, and started giving us directions to some obscure place in the "east end." We politely nodded, and left, with no intention of driving all over Kingston. (Yes, I am a musician, and if you are curious my music can be found here. )

Today, my daughter is going horseback riding along the beach. I've done this trail before, and as spectacular as riding along a stone shore is, I think the passage through the Mohawk graveyard is more fascinating. It was a quiet and reverent passage, when I went.

Tomorrow, sadly, we pack up and head to my brother in law's cottage, to help him finish the work on the barnboard kitchen. There's no Internet there, so my journal will fall silent (for real, this time. :-) On Friday, our annual family camp begins.

The family camp is a peculiar rite - my wife's family all heads for an island in the middle of Big Gull Lake. There we all pitch a camp for three days, sing songs, cook on a fire, and do fun contests for the kids. There's no electricity and no facilities on this island - it is just a bare island. We all joke about how this must mean we love wallowing in dirt. But we've done it for two decades - even my mother in law camped in a tent there in her last year. She was trying to use the next family camp as her motivation to keep going.

She didn't make it sadly - but we put the box with her ashes in a tent, and put her sun hat on the box (in her chair) during the day. So I suppose she sort of made it. :-)

The Regent

Yesterday, my wife and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 at Picton's Regent Theatre, during the last day of its run. We paid for our tickets, and bought popcorn and drinks. Surprised that we were only out seventeen bucks, my wife made sure to let the concierge know we thought this a very good deal! We went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 on a Thursday, rather than go to the movies on the weekend, because word was, the dreadful Catwoman movie was playing on the weekend.

The Regent Theatre is one of those grand old multi-use theatres that used to be plentiful in most towns, until the multiplexes in the suburbs gave them the bum's rush. Apparently, the theatre needs a million dollars in renovations, which is of huge distress to the community. The county has a very lively arts scene, with many local playwrights, songwriters, and musicians, and this is the one major showcase locale. If they cannot preserve the theatre, they will simply lose the ability to use a local large venue.

We'll certainly support the theatre via patronage - I love old theatres, and miss them in Ottawa.

We came home to find our daughter awake, and her grandparents asleep on the couch. :-)

Literature

"Literature" is probably not a good title for this post, now that I think of it. I have been reading voraciously, mind you.... but what I have been reading has not been literature in any way. As usual, I've settled into non-fiction books by journalists or op-ed writers.

I just finished "The Price of Loyalty", which tells of former Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill's time as US Treasury Secretary. And I am about to embark - I think - on Woodward's "Plan of Attack." Why do I read books that just make me upset about the state of the world?

One book I brought with me is a meditation on stillness, by a Carmelite Nun who also happens to be an art critic. She shows a series of paintings, and then reflects on the stillness to be found in it. Some are portraits, some are scenic, and some are abstract, but all in some way are calming works that can be meditated upon.

I find it hard to reach a state of serenity while here, though, especially meditating on those paintings. I am in a feast of the senses already.

I'd even go so far as to say that sneaking over to my parents and writing blog entries is about the only chance I've had for real reflection. No - that's not quite true; I'm too reflective by nature, I suppose. But uncaptured insights are like blooming dandelions on a windy day - the fluff just flies out of sight. ;-)

I think vacationing has fried my brain

I just went over the spelling of my "I Found a way to post" post - egads!

At any rate, if vacationing has yet to fry my brain, it has certainly fried my skin. I now go by the alias, "Lobster man." We went to the Sandbanks beach (not the "Outlet beach" in Athol bay that everyone thinks is the Sandbanks, but the real one that sandbars West Lake and Lake Ontario.) I had sunscreen! Really! My wife got mildly burnt, but my youngest daughter seems impervious to sunburns. Mind you, I don't think she left the water once.

My older daughter did not come with us on this trip. She is at home looking for a job. This is the first vacation we have taken without her, and her absence is a tangible emptiness. She is old enough that she would not be going everywhere with everything we have done, but I do notice her just her not being around.

Yesterday, after a little normally rough water, the water returned to its glassy state.  Watching the sun set over this is truly something to behold. Too suns approach the horizon from opposite ends, and merge in a deep red fire before winking out, leaving a crescent moon and wisps of purple clouds. Over the time my parents have lived here, I think I've photographed a hundred sunsets, and my father, hundreds more.

I'm fortunate my Mom is letting me use her computer. I can see clearly I would likely not have the self-discipline to have just booted up my own laptop and made Word document journal entries. Blogger really is useful! (Even if it does result in me spelling forty as 'fourty'. :-)

Went to an animal sanctuary yesterday

Bergeron's, it is called. Their specialty is rescuing siberian tigers from poorly run zoos, people with weird ideas about pets, and television shows.

We were there for the two o'clock feeding. Boy, does an animal ever have personality when it is hungry. These were not the lazing-about animals you see at the Toronto zoo. These tigers and lions were aggressive about the slabs of meat they were thrown, and fought for them. Quite something to see, but an hour after they had been fed, they had all retreated into hiding, or were lazing about like animals at the zoo.

We saw some Japanese Macquaques that had been rescued from some guy who got them addicted to tobacco. As usual with primates, I could not help but notice how human-like they seemed.

I have been checking my work email, a foolish thing to do on vacation. I have gotten back into getting worried about projects and deadlines. :-)

I Found a Way to Post!

Well, here I am on Quinte's Isle in Lake Ontario, and my Mom has let me use her computer. :-)
 
The first few days, the water was as calm as could be. Now, if you've ever been to the Great Lakes, you know that they are not really lakes, but in fact are small freshwater seas. The water is normally rough, breaking against the rocks below my parents' house in five to seven foot waves at times.
 
All this glassy water has let us to do things we normally can't - canoeing, for example. And we've done lots of snorkeling, which big waves can complicate too (water down the snorkle hole is a complication, I'd wager.) There are no shortage of things to see when snorkeling in this area. There are dozens of shipwrecks spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. And the wrecks are in shallow water on limestone ledges. The visibility on the calm days is something else - you can see thirty, fourty feet underwater, which is far beyond what you normally get in small muddy freshwater lakes.
 
I saw a heron yesterday, while on a visit to Point Petre with a local naturalist. Such large birds - they look a little like emaciated pelicans, or perhaps more like a stork. They like to nest in high dead trees. The swamp we were in was surrounded by blackberry bushes, a good compensation for being eaten by bugs.
 
I hope to be able to write more. Who knows? I might...

OK - so I am really going now :-)

The blog will probably go silent for a couple of weeks. However, I'll
have all my Jack Handy moments offline and ready to post. ;-)



Have a good couple of weeks!

Crisis in Sudan

For years, Arab militiamen from the North of Sudan have been hunting and killing animists and christians from the south. US experts are evaluating whether the latest incidents are genocide or not.
 
Bin Laden ran his operation out of Khartoum, Sudan once. The foreign fighters terrorizing the locals have seen better days, though. The UN security council has limited the flow of arms in Sudan, and hopefully can help the indigenous African population reclaim their country.
 
I know I have harped on this before - but I can't help it. I filter all things like this through the prism of my faith. I just cannot understand why people want to kill in the name of God. First of all, God, having created a universe uniquely suited to life, doesn't seem to me to be the kind of being who wants humans, thinking and feeling creatures in God's image, to kill each other.
 
Secondly, killing for God seems to display a remarkable lack of trust in God. If for some reason unknown to us, God truly needed someone to die, would he need ragtag bandits on horseback to carry it out? God is, in the words of St. Paul, "All in All."
 
In the Book of Job in the Tanakh/Old Testament, God asks Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Tell me if you have understanding." He does not require our help in settling questions of who should die, "for to him, all are alive." (Luke 20:38)
 
If we need to serve God with actions, that is how. Help people to live. He is God of the living, not the dead.

All things great and small

Tomopteris is a bioluminescent plankton-like worm that lives in the ocean. It is a beautiful looking creature, and possibly one of the oldest multi-cellular animals on the planet. Worms that looked a lot like are known from the Ediacaran period, nearly six hundred million years ago!
 
I am always in awe and wonder to think that so very, very long before we even came around, God was working such wonders in the world.

Martha Stewart gets 5 months

An awful lot of schadenfreude has led to the independent development of the same lame joke: "Big House and Garden."
 
Martha's sentence was close to the minimum the sentencing guidelines permitted. I think a minimal sentence is a good thing; Martha Stewart is essentially guilty of lying to investigators. Now that may be a stupid thing to do, especially when thousands of shareholders in her company relied on her good judgement to maintain the value of their investments. But it is not the kind of wrongdoing that should have her cracking rocks on the chain gang. It certainly can't compare with the kind of malfeasance that has turned up elsewhere in the corporate governance scandals that followed the dot com crash.
 
Personally, I think the judge should have taken Martha Stewart's offer to volunteer her time and efforts teaching poor women how to start successful businesses. That would have been a far more constructive use of her particular skills than making doilies for the electric chair, or potpourri shivs (I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist.)

Al Jazeera approved for Canadian TV

Al Jazeera, sometimes refered to as the "Arab CNN", has been approved for broadcast in Canada. The Canadian Jewish Congress is rightly concerned that some of the anti-semitic utterances in past broadcasts may resurface on our airwaves, but I still think letting them broadcast here is warranted.
 
For starters, Canada has a fairly large Arab population. Here in Ottawa, there are over 60,000 people of Arab descent (roughly evenly split between Christian and Muslim.) I am sure they will appreciate getting some programming in their own language other than community access.
 
A similar bid to bring an Italian news station to Canada did not succeed, unfortunately. Canada has a large Italian community, and the decision is sure to seem strange to them in light of the Al Jazeera approval.
 
Anyway, if the CRTC is worried about anti-semitic content, they can send over Don Cherry's seven second delay supervisors to pick up some extra hours.

I go on vacation tomorrow

Yes, I am headed to this place. I think I need it, too. I can sleep at night there in a way that I don't think I can anywhere else, with the waves lapping at the limestone rocks below.
 
I'm gone for two weeks, so I do not know how regular a blogger I will be during that time. If my mother will let me on the Internet, I will. Otherwise, I shall bring my laptop, and in the spirit of Jack Handy, hopefully think deep thoughts. :-)
 
One of the places that we are going to go on a day trip is Wolfe Island, which is another island in Lake Ontario. Don't ask me why, but I love islands. The idea that a small stretch of land can be out in the middle of water is perverse, especially when the body of water it sits in is itself inland. Quinte's Isle, where we'll be staying is one of the other inhabited islands of the Great Lakes. Someday, I'm hoping to visit Manitoulin Island, which is in Lake Huron.
 
I've visited Vancouver Island, which is one of Canada's largest islands. I spent two weeks staying on my sister-in-law's boat in between the island and the mainland, and on the way back to Vancouver Island, passed a couple of mid-sized islands that had complete towns on them!
 
I have yet to visit the east coast's famed islands, P.E.I., or Newfoundland. Tis only a matter of time!

Get a job

My wife and I have been trying, gently at first, to cajole my college-bound daughter into getting a job. I know she does not want to give up her active social life, but those books are expensive! And a student VISA card has as high an interest rate as mine does!

I'm thinking of hiding little recordings of that Offspring song (Why Don't You Get a Job?) around the house.

Ah the joys of being a nag. I convinced my Mom to quit smoking once with a lung shaped coughing ashtray once. :-)

B.C. Federation of doctors criticizes circumcision

The doctors find that circumcision is medically unnecessary (which nobody disputes.)

They interviewed one of the doctors on Canada A.M. and he danced around the religious question as it applies to Muslims and Jews. But any future human rights court should be warned - Jews will not be able to give this up. 2200 years ago, a Greek King named Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force the Jews to end this practice, the most important sign of the covenant for a Male Jew. The Jewish people had to fight a brutal war to maintain the right to retain their Judaism. That fight is what Hannukah commemorates.

But what do you do when two different kinds of established human rights collide? Someday, I predict, this will land in a courtroom. It should make for interesting drama when it does.

I am a Cheap Drunk

I only seldom drink alcohol. For the most part, I don't even like it, although I am partial to decent white wine, and that horse pee known as Guiness.

But even though I come from a hearty lineage of honest drinkers, I can barely get by even socially drinking. You see, I need only get halfway through one of those Smirnoff Ice coolers, and I am already tipsy, and not far from drunk if I finish it.

I am not sure if I should complain - really, it means I can go to a BYOB party, spend quite little on booze, and get the most out of it. But being male, I can't help but harbour the secret fantasy of drinking Black Jacques Shellaque of the Klondike under the table.

It is never going to happen for me, however. :-)

Transcendant Moments

I am an admirer of the writings of St. Augustine. His awkward recounting of a life that he didn't much care for in retrospect is very touching for me, as I find an echo of my own shortcomings in it.

In Chapter 9 of Confessions, he describes a moment when he and his mother Monica are talking about their faith. As their discussion deepens, the words stop, and they are swept up in a spiritual ecstasy that is nothing short of beatific. Just as quickly, they are let back down to Earth.

Have you ever had that fleeting moment when you were sure God was near, and for just a moment, drew you close to Heaven? Like St. Augustine's moment, these moments never seem to last long, but they do leave a lasting impression.

And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the Selfsame, and we gradually passed through all the levels of bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. Indeed, we soared higher yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at thy works.

And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them, that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty where thou feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, where life is that Wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have been and which are to be. Wisdom is not made, but is as she has been and forever shall be; for "to have been" and "to be hereafter" do not apply to her, but only "to be," because she is eternal and "to have been" and "to be hereafter" are not eternal.

And while we were thus speaking and straining after her, we just barely touched her with the whole effort of our hearts. Then with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the Spirit bound to that ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the spoken word had both beginning and end. But what is like to thy Word, our Lord, who remaineth in himself without becoming old, and "makes all things new."

And now, Bud Light brings you the Light-On Poetry Slam!

A few years ago I got the urge to participate in the local FreeNet's poetry newsgroup. I've written songs for decades, but I had not written a poem since being a kid. This is the first one I wrote, and it comes from before all the coaching the newsgroup residents gave me on avoiding vague or "feeling" words. I would later write poetry that was more technically proficient than this, but I have always been fond of this first one, because it was quite genuine.

Emily

Emily.

A wooden heart sits in the living bouquet. Your name is on it.
But you are not here, just a memory of someone who came and fled
Like a shadow or a passing eye.

I have paused here and wondered often
in this quiet place near the beach, in this small sleepy town.
Who were you?
What were you?

I know a little

24, married by the look of it
And you lived here, but I can guess no more
The rest I imagine.
I wonder what melancholy story is behind this plot
I can only imagine the hearts that broke with you
I envision the lonely glance at a picture on a mantle
The soft whisper in the wind of your name when they visit you.

But all I find here is the echo of the living
in a tender wooden heart carved with Emily.

Small Towns (not a John Mellencamp post)

Have you ever noticed that some small towns have as much character as the most notable big cities? Strange how that is.

Eufala, Alabama is a town I love. As you drive down the main street, all these French mansions line the road, on both sides. It is really something to see. The town has lush vegetation, which you don't see everywhere in Alabama.

Wakefield, Quebec is a little artsy town nestled in the Gatineau hills beside the Gatineau river. It is the perfect little artsy town, and most of the arts community from nearby Ottawa, Ontario lives here. There are rumours that famous folk live here, but the locals are discrete and won't tell you who. (Kathleen Edwards! Kathleen Edwards!) Every Saturday night, the whole town congregates in a bar called the Black Sheep Inn. The townsfolk try to keep the local drunks from embarassing themselves, but sometimes fail at this. I frequently expect Hobbits to pop out of a hole while I am there.

I can't tell you how many nameless towns in Tennessee I have been through - nestled in a valley between mountains, as if they were the only towns in the world. And yet in these towns, the normal rhythm of life carries on - there are Arby's and Food Lion stores, and the golden arches.

At the end of the Cabot trail is a small Acadian town whose name I forget. The Acadians are the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns, and visiting is like a trip there in some ways, except the scenery looks like Scotland. The locals speak French with an accent very unlike the French spoken here in the Ottawa valley - they talk, well, a little like the "Aieee doo!" guy from the Kia commercials. :-)

Bloomfield, on Quinte's Isle is perhaps the most gentrified small town on the face of the Earth. Every block screams "Toronto", but the adaptive Torontonians try so hard to fit into the small town life, that it is kind of a quaint pastiche all to itself.

Funny how I remember just as much about these little towns as I do Atlanta, Syracuse, or Toronto. I guess it is all about quality, not quantity.

Another attempt at a PhotoBlog

Well, since I don't have a computer powerful enough to use that IM tool that sends stuff to Blogger, I've had to throw pictures up in other places.

I think I've settled on a good companion photoblog. So here, with no drumroll, is http://leavethelighton.buzznet.com/

There's a link to it down the menu on the left.

Eternity, Theism, Atheism

In an earlier post, I noted how troubled theorists, bothered by the evidence for a universe that has an origin point, have come up with interesting theories that take creation out of the equation. This hypothesis is often called the "Colliding brane" theory.

I read today a letter to the editor (in the Globe and Mail) in which the author spouts out the usual rhetorical nonsense that seems to come from those opposed to the idea of there being a God: the inevitable comparison of God to the Tooth Fairy. I'm surprised the tooth fairy's rhetorical cohorts, Santa and the Easter Bunny, weren't tossed in, too, but the Globe likes to limit letters to 200 words.

I wrote a letter to the editor, and here is part of my response to this letter.

However one might wish to reduce the religious question to such frivolity, it is difficult to do so. Both those who lack belief in God and those who do not share one thing in common - the idea that something is eternal. With atheists, that usually means some descendant of the steady state universe theory, be that colliding branes or some other garden variety multiverse. For those of us of the theist bent, the eternal is that property we associate with that deity we believe to be responsible for our decidedly non-eternal universe.

Is the difference that great? Or should I associate steady state theories with the tooth fairy, and just be done with it?

The Magnificat

One of the most beautiful prayers I know is called the "Magnificat" - it is the poem of praise said by Mary in Luke when she is visiting her cousing Elizabeth.

Even though the prayer is written in Mary's voice, I say it from time to time, because we are all so blessed by God. Actually, it is more likely that I sing it. There is a glorious version of the prayer in song by John Michael Talbot.

It is a particularly beautiful prayer, for it shows how God does not favour the already-strong, or those who consider themselves the deserving. Mary counts God as a Savior who raises up the poor, and scatters the proud. All those who think in their suffering that God has abandoned them can see that they are wrong: for it is when you most need God's help, that He is most willing to send it.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

Luke (1:46-55)

Remember the Sabre-Toothed Chipmunk in Ice Age?

Word is, that may not be all that far from the truth. Apparently, the population of chipmunks in current northern climes are not descended from populations that went south during the glaciation, but from populations that stayed put!

Who knew?

Entropy

My favourite character in Jurassic Park is Ian Malcolm, ably played by Jeff Goldblum. He has all the best lines, including a shell-shocked, "Do you think they'll have that on the tour?" after nearly being eaten out of a jeep by a hungry Tyrannosaur.

In the Chrichton novel, Malcolm is a more serious figure, demonstrating mathematically why attempts to reduce complex systems down to simple ones inevitably fail. I recently read an interesting argument that this is fundamentally what has gone wrong in Iraq.

Its a challenging and intelligently made argument. I do not know if it is true, as there have certainly been bigger wars in the history of the world. Certainly an ineptly waged war is not proof by itself that chaos theory applies to the waging of war.

Still I think the idea is generally supportable. There is only one true source of order, in my opinion: God. He alone can fashion purpose and purposefulness out of all the randomness that besets us daily. I think that is one of the most important reasons we as human beings are called to humility. So much can go wrong for us, that we need to admit to ourselves that many of our plans will go awry. We need to be open to changing our plans, changing our minds, and changing ourselves.

The only thing we should not change is our trust that God is All in All. (And He knows what He is doing. :-)

Watching things take shape

It is a testimony to the thinking abilities human beings have been endowed with that we can imagine a room so completely in the abstract, and then proceed to build it as we imagine it.

I think I've mentioned before that I was helping my brother in law build kitchen cabinets out of old barn board, planed down to look like new. Well, we more or less finished the cabinets a couple of weeks ago. This weekend, we tore apart his kitchen, rewired the electrical outlets, and started drywalling. After we had a few walls done, we hoisted a few of the cabinets up, so we could get a look at them. They look just like that picture he drew in his mind, back in the winter.

The lucky people who have done a major construction or landscaping project share a secret others don't seem to understand: redoing a room well is like the great art of a painter. There are all the same subtleties at hand - the way the light bounces out of a window, or the way the tint of a wood selected is brought out by the colour of tiles you use on the floor.

Perhaps everything is art. It makes sense in a world created by the greatest Master Artist of all!

Ever wonder what the seas of Mars might have looked like?

Space.com has a page with a few renderings. It is fascinating to imagine another waterworld, when it seems such a distinct signature of our world.

My Parents

It was nice to see them yesterday. My wife and youngest daughter are working at my brother in law's cottage this week, and my older daughter is, well, too old and too cool to spend much time with Dad. :-)

But surprisingly, I haven't had time to be lonely. My Dad and I went swimming in the pool at their hotel. I forget how clear the water is in a pool - most lakes are murky and hard to see in. Swimming in a pool is like floating in the air, at least until the chlorine gets you. We talked about many things, including my crazy brother.

My brother is a real character, and he always has been. When he first came home from the hospital, I decided to share my most precious possession with him; I put my security blanket in his crib. He tossed it right out again - don't ask me how!

He calls my cat "Rusty" even though he's known for fifteen years that his name is in fact "Dusty." My brother has been in the clothing recycling business for about ten years, and he never wears the same thing twice. He takes clothes out of the piles he manages, wears and washes them, and then puts them back. At an ice fishing tourney, he once wore this full length fur coat with fur a foot thick, and a russian bearskin hat. He looked just like Sasquatch!

When my brother graduated from university with his Poli-Sci degree, he applied for a job as a political aide with every single member of Parliament. He got a rejection letter from every single one! He mulled making a giant collage out of these letters, and selling it to the National Gallery as art (unemployment was very thematic at the time, as there was a recession.)

He owns part of a farm my parents once owned, and has a mile of waterfront. He is great pals with a lot of the locals, and always has them over for his fishing derbies. About a year ago, he bought a cannon, which he fires across the lake about twice a year. You can hear it in the town at the other end of the lake, and he is always asked about it there when he fires it.

We went to a French dinner theatre once, and of course my brother struck up a friendship with all the people there, using only rudimentary French to do so!

What would we do without the colourful people in our lives? :-)

My parents are in town

They went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 with my brother last night. That was the activity I was going to propose for them tonight. I asked my mother if she thought it was too violent, because she hates watching violence. She did not seem to think the film was overly violent, fortunately.

I suppose we are inundanted with so much cinematic violence that we are quite innoculated against the shock of seeing people die. How sad for us that we are so acclimatized to death and destruction!

Instead, I am going to go over to their hotel. We'll eat, laugh, and I will get to go for a swim. Is it better to do such simple things than work up a rage over this war in Iraq? I don't know. Some part of me thinks that it is futile to be upset over things so far out of our power to change up here in Canada. On the other hand, I can't help but forget St. Paul's admonishment not to let the sun go down on your anger.

Of course righteous anger does not seek violence. Nor is it futile. Righteous anger has a purpose. I used it in the recent election, by ensuring that the pro-War Conservative party did not get my vote. Righteous anger grabs ahold of your sensibilities; it does not take hold of your heart, nor harden it. :-)

Amor vincit omnia. Maybe I can do more to end war by loving my parents (and everyone else I know, too, of course) and keeping every moment precious like a gift from God then I could do being upset about it.

I hope so. It is what I aim to do. :-)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In the film "Dead Man Walking," Susan Sarandon's Sister Helen upraids Sean Penn's character for his disrespectfulness after he makes a lurid remark. He asks if she feels she's due this respect just because she is a Nun, and she replies that no, she is due it because she is a person.

Increasingly today, we regard each other as commodities to be exploited. We all do it. I can think of a few times I've done this in the last twenty four hours. Who has not looked at another person and thought only of what you can get from that person?

On the bus this morning, the bus driver was gruff with a couple of riders. Beside me, some women were sympathizing with how hard it was to be a bus driver dealing with the public all the time, but how he should just grin and bear it.

I thought about it some, but I just cannot draw any conclusions. I know from personal experience how hard it is to fake sincerity (irony intended.) What are we looking for? If we cover up our grufness, are we doing so as a defensive mechanism to avoid complaints from others on how we interact with them? Do we put on pleasantries in order to win their business?

To my mind, these things show no respect to ourselves or to the people we are pretending for.

There is only one reason to be pleasant to others. It is that small mercy we do to each other, because we know we need it done for us. How many times has some stranger shared a smile with us that took away the cloud over our heads? How many angels of mercy have rescued us in small ways, leaving something we really needed with a lost and found department, or given us directions we could not do without?

In all our waking hours we have the opportunity to be that person for someone else. If there is ever a reason to break out of our commodity dealings with each other, it is this reason. You may save someone - in small ways only, perhaps.

But not everyone you can save lies beaten on the roadside needing a Samaritan. Sometimes they just need a smile. :-)

Titan A.E.

The Cassini probe sent to study Saturn is now part of Saturn's lunar neighbourhood. One of the most interesting things it has to investigate is the moon Titan - the solar system's largest moon, nearly as big as Mars.

As always seems to be the case, this moon is not what scientists expected. They thought they would find a world covered in methane oceans. Instead, the good folks at JPL don't seem to know what they've found!

Whenever a probe finds out that the universe is not living up to the theories about it, I am reminded of the saying from Hamlet; "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreampt of in thy philosophy."

I think this is the longest I've gone

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting here, since I started. I may go even longer soon. I am taking a couple of weeks vacation, and I don't imagine I will be near a computer during that time.

What a wonderful thing summer is. Driving down the road to Cherry Valley in Quinte's Isle a week or so ago, I noticed that the afterglow was still hanging in there as late as 10:30 at night! Of course, daylight peaks with the solstice just as summer gets under way, so summer is a waning season.

But it is okay for things to wane. As pretty as the rising dawn is, a sunset is even prettier. What comes leaves us with much anticipation and/or fear - but anticipation is often disappointed, and fears are often unrealized. What has come leaves us with memories - memories that either chasten us to do better, or leave us with a feeling of satisfaction and happiness.

Not that memories are always objectively correct, of course. But they leave us with a much better sense of who we are then the wishes we whisper into the wind.

If you could feel what God feels

If you could feel what God feels, your heart would explode with joy, and it would break with sorrow. It would rage like the seas, and know a calm beyond all wisdom. You would have the patience to wait a billion years, and yet be inescapably lost in every moment. You would not only know love, you would literally be Love itself.

"How weighty to me are your
thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them - they are more
than the sand;
I come to the end - I am still
with you."

(Psalm 139:17-18)

Giving the way I got

I got my gmail account through the kindness of a Blogger. I shall pass on that kindness.

First person to post their email as a comment to this post gets a gmail invite from me.

Loving Canada

Today is Canada Day - a day for Canadians to take pride in who and what they are.

Of course, the kind of self-loathing pundits that populate such rags as the National Post will tell you that "Canadian pride" essentially constitutes anti-Americanism (in part because of course they believe there is nothing to actually be proud of.)

I would actually defend the anti-American strain that runs through Canadian nationalism. This anti-American strain is not a hatred of Americans or their country. It is simply a reflection of an important part of Canada's history. English Canada was primarily founded by Americans loyal to the crown fleeing the nascent American state. They had an alternate vision of an America, and the Canadian federation in large part reflects that vision. We retain important links, both legal and traditional, to the British crown. Our country was negotiated into existence. And because we are an alternate vision of America, we are far fewer in number than those who hold the grand vision to the south of us.

But my pride in Canada goes beyond this contra-American streak I've just described. I am proud to be Canadian because everywhere I have gone in this great land, I have seen incredible beauty. I have seen the Broughton archipelago between the mainland and Vancouver Island. I have seen Nanaimo. I've driven the Cabot trail. I've seen the St. Lawrence where it flares so wide you can't see the other side, and where the belugas swim. I've seen the shores of the Great Lakes, which in any smaller a country would be counted as seas. I have seen the vast flatlands of the prairies, which lets you see the skies as big as they really are. I've lived much of my life in the forests and lakelands of the Ottawa Valley, where many people still speak with a slight Scottish lilt, and where the sun sets on the Rideau system lakes in a way that assures you God is near. I have, from the air, seen the great rivers that run through the Rocky Mountains like runoff from the eavestroughing.

I am proud of a place where so many imported cultures thrive with the vibrancy of their original homes. There are whole neighbourhoods in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa where Karachi is recreated, or Hong Kong, or Milan. We may have the richest culture of any country anywhere, because all cultures converge in this place.

I love Canada. National Post columnists may loathe Canada and wish it was something else.

But I don't.