Everyone knows the name and reputation of Nelson Mandela. Few of us know much about a perhaps even greater contemporary South African, F. W. de Klerk. Frederik Willem de Klerk was the last President of South Africa under apartheid, and in many ways the most surprising person you might imagine to take such momentous steps….
If I read one more pontification about the need to “reign in” the US Supreme Court or some other out of line demagogues, I’m going to jump off a cliff. No parachute. Not that I disagree with what they’re trying to say, but because they’re relying on spellcheck instead of proofreading. Kings and queens reign,…
Pity the poor turkey! In French and dozens of other languages (including Turkish) it’s called the Indian Bird. In Portuguese it’s called “Peru”, in Spanish it’s Pavo, and in Dutch and many Germanic languages it is called some variation of “chalk bird”. In English, we call the creature a “turkey” based entirely on a historic…
When I was a little kid, I understood the importance of the Lord’s Prayer, and said it dutifully every night. But what never made sense to me was the “howled be thy name” part. Pious wolves in the forest? It was part of the mystery, along with “Howl Ween”, mysteries that I’d try to solve…
I’ll admit to shedding a few tears when, at the end of Brian Mulroney’s funeral they played a clip of himself singing We’ll Meet Again in his lovely Irish baritone, or earlier a few lines from Danny Boy. I’ll also admit that although I’m not a Tory, I voted consistently for him, and regard him…
A few years before I retired from practicing law, one of my colleagues got mugged by the Law Society. Beaten up and left for dead. My friend survived, but not without countless sleepless nights and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal defense fees. And what was his transgression? Well, in one of his…
There are probably a couple of things you didn’t know about Canada and Denmark. One is that until recently, each bordered only one other country by land (the US and Germany, respectively). The other is that now Denmark and Canada share a land border with each other. And this is all the result of the…
The 16th century nun Saint Teresa of Avila is purported to have said: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” How profound. What a commentary on our human condition, and no reflection on God’s answering of prayers. If we are careless in our wishes, we can’t blame God or fate for the…
Grumpy old men the world over insist that women get back into their proper place. Whether the Taliban, the mullahs, or MAGA, these misogynistic medieaval leftovers pine for a world where women know their place as providers of pleasure, domestic care, and offspring, and stop worrying their pretty little heads about more complicated stuff that…
This missive was written in two parts. The following was written before the Presidential Debate: Most of us are beginning to agree with Tim Walz’s description of his Republican counterpart as “a bit weird”. The man who is potentially just one heart attack or one psychiatric intervention away from being the next “leader of the…