After all the troubles and trials of 2020, I wanted to end the year with something completely meaningless but fun. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.
Happy New Year!
Giraffes Diving
December 31, 2020
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Image: Commercial Drive: Licorice Party
December 31, 2020
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Night Music: How
December 30, 2020A masterpiece to end the year.
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Image: Branches and Clouds
December 29, 2020
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Remembering Wounded Knee
December 29, 2020On a cold morning 130 years ago today, the US cavalry massacred more than 250 disarmed Lakota men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. A few days earlier they had murdered the great chief Sitting Bull.
The massacre at Wounded Knee was one of the final and most vicious military acts in the government’s century-long plan of genocide against native Americans, and twenty soldiers earned the Medal of Honor for their part in the brutal affair.
We must never forget that the American’s vaunted Manifest Destiny meant death for millions of indigenous peoples.
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Night Music: Stormy Monday
December 28, 2020
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Poem: December 31, 2000
December 28, 2020
In a bus line
in the heart of the city,
in a hailstorm thrusting silver shards of icy glass
deep into the concrete earth,
a woman holds a little Japanese baby
the colour of Cadbury’s
Dairy Milk Chocolate.
Asleep in peace,
his little fingers wave in the air like
undulating undersea fronds.
Beneath the coloured threads and protective fibres
of his logoed rainsuit,
no fever shakes the young child’s bones,
no distrust disturbs the sleep of purity,
no threats or worries fly about
in his head so full of wonder and learning.
In this child’s dreams lies the promise
Of the new year.
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Image: Northern Wheat
December 25, 2020
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Night Music: Fairytale of New York
December 24, 2020
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Image: Flower Offering
December 23, 2020
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Let’s Get Rid Of Santa Claus
December 22, 2020
Can anyone explain to me why we still need the myth (or more truthfully, lie) about Santa Claus. Why not just tell kids that this is the time of year we give each other gifts because we love each other?
I don’t believe the lies we tell children add anything to the fun. In fact, as many of us can attest, when the truth does come out it can bring sorrow and heartache to the little ones, crushing their fantasies and forever making them doubt our word.
Those who follow a religion have even less need to lie. Christians for example can explain that the gifts celebrate the birth of Jesus rather than being the result of a merchandising gimmick designed to suck more money out of the parents’ pockets.
Rather than fill our children’s heads with idiotic notions about flying reindeer and a jolly old man (who has a rather unsavoury appetite for young people) why not extol the virtues of freely giving just for the sake of love? Isn’t that a better lesson?
Santa Claus is a malicious fiction and the sooner we rid ourselves of the lies we tell about it the better.
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Night Music: Moonlight In Vermont
December 22, 2020
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MOMA’s Best Photos 2020
December 22, 2020The Museum of Modern Art’s magazine — My Modern Met — has selected its favourite 60 images from the year. There is a wealth of beauty and wonder here, and it is hard to select just a few, but these are the three that I selected.
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Wise Words
December 22, 2020“No one and nothing can free you but your own understanding”
— Ajahn Chah
“None but ourselves can free our minds”
— Bob Marley
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Poem: Fog
December 21, 2020
The smog-laden tangerine fog
tinted by a million lamplights
lays heavy tonight;
the busy rustle of the city’s moves
lost in its depths
like the delicate harmonies of a dulcimer
played in the attic as heard in the basement.
Closer, much closer, I hear
the lazy rustle of the scorpion
picking carelessly at a pecan shell.
I blink in the orange darkness.
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Winter is Here!
December 21, 2020It is 2:02am and it is the winter solstice. Hooray!
From this day forward (or at least until June) every 24 hours has more daylight than the day before — about 2 minutes a day, or about 20 minutes added between now and New Year!
Almost makes a snowy Monday morning worthwhile, doesn’t it?
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Happy Shab-E Yalda
December 20, 2020
The winter solstice is home to so many ancient festivals. This is for my Iranian readers.
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Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 