Warm Fuzzy World

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Blog note: During these COVID days, with shuttered wi-fi cafes, I am posting on Tuesday mornings.

Hello Reader,

Got warm fuzzies?

I first encountered the terms “warm fuzzies,” —not to mention “cold pricklies” and the “hip woman,” who had big hips— in an allegory, obviously from the ‘safe-to-be-creative’ late 1960’s. (Here’s the story)

The wee story was a warning against “zero sum” thinking, or “fixed pie” thinking, or “not enough human worth to go around for all the common people” thinking, a warning badly needed because such crazy thinking was so prevalent in certain less functional families, communities and work sites. I’m glad things have gotten better since the 1950’s.

(Note: Even today, some males don’t want to allow equal rights to females, out of some wimpy fear of getting less of the respect pie) 

In the real world, of course, while we can’t all have a special first place blue ribbon, we can all receive ordinary compliments, hugs and smiles. Why not? Why not be bountiful with giving warm fuzzies? When reading the allegory of warm fuzzies for the very first time I thought, “Wha-what? Wow! What a concept!” 

Since I grew up on an emotional ice burg, and then initially found employment in frozen toxic places, I was surprised by the hip woman’s message. But it sunk in, and since then I have tried to be bountiful with my appreciation for all God’s children, and lavish in my praise.

In fact, several store clerks have said I was their favorite customer. To me, being positive to clerks, besides the joy of giving warm fuzzies, offers a way of feeling like “I am paying my way on the human scene…” I don’t mean “pay,” rather, I mean I am crew not passenger, host not guest, giver not beggar, while feeling gracious in my bounty. It’s a lifestyle choice. 

Last month I was with millionaire blogger Derek Sivers. As he checked out of his luxury hotel it was natural to him to compliment a desk clerk on her spectacles. As did I. Then she said she liked mine too. A week later, during an e-mail, when I referenced this incident as being like in my Kind to Clerks essay, Derek had forgotten about his compliment. Because his appreciative lifestyle was so natural to him.

(By the way, Derek liked my Clerks essay, archived November 2019)

Parting thought: Of course I still have my bad hair—I mean, bad heart days when I am feeling witchy, or small, or ungiving, or waiting for someone else to smile first… I’m only human.

Sean Crawford

Chestermere,

made in March, 

released in May, 

2020

Sidebar: 

Speaking of “being kind,” I am proud that (link) Canada is kindly pushing for Taiwan to be allowed observer status with the World Health Organization. Especially since Taiwan, with only six—count ‘em, six— COVID-19 deaths, has something to teach the world… if allowed freedom to speak. (Now at seven)

If the United Nation’s WHO is reluctant to grant observer status, when doing so is surely a “no-brainer,” then it can only be because the WHO is under secret orders from communist officials in Beijing, lest Taiwan then desire “freedom from China.” Canada needs warm fuzzy allies to help push for justice for Taiwan, over in the Asian corner of the world, because the communist officials no longer believe in their doctrine of equality. Instead, it’s as if “‘All countries are equal,’ but China is more equal than others.”

If I would say that, “Yes, China morally deserves to rule Taiwan,” then I would have to face up to explaining why there have been not just days, not even weeks, but in fact months of demonstrations by so many idealistic young and old men and women on the streets of Hong Kong… I can face facts: China is not even morally fit to rule China, let alone a democracy like Canada or Taiwan. 

See my essay China Molests Canada archived May 2020.

Blog Administrator’s Note:

President Ronald Reagan asked for, “a kinder, gentler America.” 

Doctor Who said, “Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.” 

I said, “Inspired by Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who… I could simply add “kind” to my blog site labels…” 

(Labels are on the right, that people can click on) 

So I did add “kind,” putting three posts under that label. 

Mind you, just as the label “humor” is for those few blog posts that advise, in part, on how to be funny, not simply for posts that have jokes, so too will the label“kind” be used for essays that advise, in part, on how to be kind.

As Reagan said, God bless America.

Art, a Man, and Intuition

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got art and intuition?

Art

I hate to sound like I was once a sick puppy, but yes, as faithful readers know, I have a past. And so I was already middle aged, over 35, before I took an excellent lengthy aptitude test as part of my undergraduate class. My dominant job aspect? “Artistic.” I said, “Oh.” Me? Really? Of course I’m not prejudiced anymore against fancy artists but… it took a while to sink in. Apparently I would make a good executive on Mad Men.

Happily, I have since been privileged to go with others to periodically visit an artist, my sensei, Sheri-D Wilson, in her living room as part of making my War of the Worlds poetry manuscript. In mid-winter once, after supper at the Wainwright Hotel, I walked through the starlit snow to see Sheri-D perform at the Canmore Opera House. (A wonderful log building) So I know a little about artists. In fact, during a weekend poetry workshop by Sheri-D, I said I was only now learning to feel right saying “we artists.” A lady then began crying, saying she too was learning to say “we.”

A man

I suppose having an artistic streak explains best-selling writer Michael Korda. I found his book about T.E. Lawrence to be, as a blurb writer wrote, “unputdownable.” I started over halfway in, beginning with Lawrence of Arabia’s postwar year, and read through to the end. Took three hours. 

Besides his amazing originality in warfare and statecraft, Lawrence also went on to bring in reforms including (“but not limited to” says my Yankee lawyer) eliminating the taken-for-granted ankle puttees and Prussian collars for the RAF. While working with RAF speed boats, for rescuing planes downed in the water, he innovated a hull design that would be used by the U.S. Patrol Torpedo boats. His small motorboat manual, according to Korda, was excellent in having concision, and being comprehensive, and including extra things such as how to manage during storms. Lawrence’s reforms were quietly accomplished through people he knew of high rank, with no limelight for Lawrence. His own postwar rank? ( Enlisted) Airman second class. (Yes, nearly everybody on base knew who he was)

Apparently Lawrence had an artist’s disregard for conformity. He began the war as a young army lieutenant, and ended as a young lieutenant-colonel. Before the war, of course, he was an archeologist and graduate of Oxford university. Postwar, in his thirties, he translated Homer’s poetry epic, the Odyssey. But not as a poem, as a prose novel: How strange, how delightful. Also strange is how the man who was too poor to afford a boarding school such as Eton ended up a friend to frightfully rich, famous, original people such as George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. For his friendships, and for his life in general, Lawrence had complete disregard for “fame, rank and fortune.”

So was Lawrence socially, then, an artist among artists? Obviously Shaw was one, but not the others I know of, although of course the British education system at the time stressed being well rounded. Churchill, as it happened, not only painted as a hobby but wrote a book on the subject. 

(By the way, I have seen one of Churchill’s paintings hanging in the stairwell of the Lieutenant-Governor’s house, back when she lived off Jasper avenue across the asphalt plain from the old provincial museum, the one that has since moved downtown to just off Churchill Square. May I boast? I once held the door open for the lieutenant-governor to enter the museum. I didn’t know I was supposed to let her royal Canadian mountie do that, until she laughingly told me so.)

I wonder: Was Lawrence artistic? I don’t think so: Because I have no knowledge of him using art for self-expression, although maybe his entire unconventional life was a work of art. Perhaps his postwar life as a clerk, and as a mechanic, fulfilled a creative streak in him that I don’t know about.. The main reason that I don’t suppose he was “artistic” is I can scarcely imagine a good artist achieving such exceptional success in war. (Incidentally, Napoleon said a general was no good unless he could look dry eyed at a silent body-strewn battlefield)

Perhaps, then, his amazing originality came not so much from an “artist’s creativity” as from feeling “unfettered by society.” Willing to fearlessly think and see. Like young Patton and Eisenhower scandalizing the military establishment by working on newfangled battle tanks together. 

(Patton had to scramble to recover his reputation by writing magazine articles on horse cavalry tactics) 

You can achieve a lot if you haven’t had a lifetime of self-training in automatic conformity. 

If my speculation is correct, then Lawrence’s social circle was not other artists, but other “originals,” folks who were themselves unfettered. I wonder if they formed a secret club of those who conformed in dress, speech and thought only out of politeness, who would then fondly enjoy relaxing in private with likeminded friends. 

Like how if you and I were transported to the 1950’s we would naturally gravitate to relaxing among individuals who believed in equal respect for women and nonwhite races, and enjoying drinks among folks who believed it was OK for males to be verbally skilled and cultured, instead of “strong and silent.” Maybe if I went to live in the year the twin towers fell, I would be dining among those who share our 2020 A.D. belief in the appropriateness of homosexuality, and of gender transitioning, for schoolchildren. Or maybe not.

It was a countryman of Lawrence, the Nobel prize winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell, a man born in the Victorian age, who said you could achieve the freedom of a “licensed lunatic” if only you “made it clear, even to the stupidest, that (in being original) you were not criticizing them.” I can relate, having a life-time of self-training in being nice and polite. Truly, no one angrily says, “Who does he think he is?” Except maybe the very stupidest.

Everyone knows I’m a thinker; no one calls me a nerd,. As for thinking, my new insight on T.E. Lawrence being not an artist but an original has “made my day.” That, and being amused at the idea of a secret club. 

Last month in London, I socialized with a chap from Oxford who was born rich middle class, now a multi-millionaire. And even though “I’m just a poor boy, from a poor family” I swear we both felt perfectly normal around each other. Call us club members.

Intuition

As for what club my poetry teacher would belong to, I have no idea. She is certainly intuitive. By this I don’t mean the usual definition that might, maybe, possibly, be “explained” by having a subconscious like a super-computer, putting together teeny tiny unnoticed clues. I suppose a lifetime of being willing to see would aide the inner computer. 

No, what I mean is Sheri-D Wilson had access to “an extra perception.” You’re on your own with that one, as I can’t begin to explain her various examples. One thing my sensei could (rarely) do is like what was documented by Robert Masters, a British officer stationed in India, who could speak both Gurkha and English. He once overheard a British Tommy and a Gurkha soldier, each speaking only their own language, having a sensible conversation.

There are things beyond us, oh Horatio.

I’m artistic myself, yet I don’t know if that explains my having a “weird intuition” three times last month while I was in Central London. 

(By the way, I just barely beat the virus by flying home February 28, started coughing five days later… but it was only a cold. Praise the Lord.)

In a Bloomsbury used book store I asked a handsome, plainly dressed staff, “Are you a linguistics guy?” We talked. He was from Italy, and yes, he had minored in linguistics. 

(I wanted to know why foreign languages have so many syllables; his answer jived with my essay where Doctor Who pronounces “Vincent Van Goff”, archived as Anglicizing, June 2018) 

In a diner near my hotel I asked a young lady with an original hairstyle, “Are you a poet?” We talked. (Besides putting poems fortnightly onto my blog, I attend a weekly poetry cafe) Not only was she an active poet, she was just learning to write sestinas. (poems with the hardest rules, harder than a sonnet) 

In a Van Gogh exhibit on loan from Holland, in a huge special tent, I found a pretty teenage girl on a bench in the lobby, waiting for her father. I asked, “Are you a Doctor Who fan?” She was excited to answer “Yes!” and told me that part of the TV episode with Vincent Van Gogh was included near the end of the tour. We talked. I told her and her dad about the Who Store being only 30 minutes by tube east of Central London, and about a fan’s “Doctor-and-Vincent” music video on Youtube. I play it often. The dad knew of the band ,Athlete, although I didn’t. Here’s the link.

By “weird intuition,” I mean: Who in the world would suddenly blurt out speculations about perfect strangers—and be right every time?

Sean Crawford 

East of Banff, 

March, 

2020

Footnotes: 

~I usually forget that I can figuratively “open my third eye” for about ten seconds at a time. No more, because it blinds me. Some knowledge is too much. Like how a social work student can do the in-class exercise “What I hear you saying is…” and then refuse to do so in the student union building—because who wants to know how very seldom we “get it right” in real life?

~Speaking of smart people, I had a friend who, although from remote Saskatchewan, knew foreign languages, and attended medical school without needing to take the Latin course. 

In my essay Blair, Being Smart, archived September 2011, I wrote of how Blair coped with being so brainy.

~In my essay Loving Greek and Latin archived March 2012, while feeling a gentle breeze from Oxford, I wrote of learning among future physicians and biologists.

Kind and Loving

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Who has not found the heaven below  

Will fail of it above.  

God's residence is next to mine,  

His furniture is love.

Emily Dickinson 

In the end, only kindness matters.

Jewel, singing “These Hands”

Hello Reader,

Got kind and loving?

Recently I was thinking about Self Improvement. Something I lately realize: Improvement leads to Achieving One’s Potential, which leads to achieving kindness: The real potential. This new idea I gleaned from a famous blogger, Penelope Trunk. I was fascinated by her post Living Up to Your Potential is BS (footnote) from August 2008.

I would hope that being filled with kindness could lead to expressing love. 

Meanwhile, an even more famous lady, Hollywood’s Kristen Bell, notes that love can be a superpower. And she would know, since she voices Anna, the girl who’s sister Elsa, in the kingdom of Arendelle, has a superpower over ice and snow: In Frozen, the Disney movie.  

Speaking of “sisters,” if my name was Sister Teresa I suppose I would know all about kindness, and move on to India and become Mother Teresa. Then I could blog my knowledge about kindness back to you. But no, I am only me… all I can do, from various sources, is glean knowledge for being kind and loving, and then share. Here’s Penelope—her post starts with a photograph of a man in bed with a sheet over him, reading a book crudely titled How to Get Up and Get Dressed

QUOTE

(After being optimistic enough to get out of bed) 

The next big goals we have are the spiritual kind: Be good, be kind, treat people with respect. You probably don’t write these on your to do list, but now that you read them, surely you are thinking to yourself, “Oh yeah, I want to remember to do that.”

Living up to your potential is not crossing off everything on your to do list on time, under budget. Or canonizing your ideas in a book deal. Really, no one cares. You are not on this earth to do that. Trust me. No one is. You are on this earth to be kind. That is your only potential.

And then you have to earn a living.

UNQUOTE

So heartening! I could do that.

You are probably wondering what Kristen said. As it happens, in an interview with Mark Daniell, in the Calgary Sun, November 17, Mark asked: 

“My niece had a question when she heard I was talking to you. She wanted to know if the new movie is going to answer why Princess Anna doesn’t have powers?”

QUOTE

She does have powers. Her power is love. Her power has always been love. Anna has always had the strongest power of all. You may tell your niece that. 

Personally, I’ve walked through life feeling like I have a superpower because I’ve practiced trying to love everyone around me and it has filled me up with a ton of self-esteem. But I love when I’m good to people. I love it. I love that about myself. That might sound selfish, but I sleep so well at night being kind to everyone around me. 

It’s not to say that I don’t have bad days, I do. But when people ask me that question I always tell them: Anna does have a superpower and that power is love.

UNQUOTE

So inspiring! I could practise being loving. 

Of course I could always work on becoming wealthy, of course. But if one day I meet you after making my first million, wearing a broad imported silk tie, and a big wide platinum lapel broach, then I would hope that what you would remember about me, later, is not my success in achieving affluence, but my success in becoming kind and loving. 

And wouldn’t that be a worthy goal down through the new year of 2020?

As long as I’m gleaning wisdom from people more rich and famous than I am, let the last words be from a man my own age, Peter Capaldi, in his character as the twelfth Doctor Who, “summing up” before his time runs out:

“Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.”

Sean Crawford

Calgary

January

2020

Footnotes:

~For a follow up, you might like my post Be Kind to Clerks, archived November 2019.

~Here’s Penelope Trunk’s blog post.

~More on Doctor Who’s end-of-life summary of his motives: 

From his final episode, The Doctor Falls, on that fated day when he has no hope to see the next sunrise, comes this long video clip. He is a near-immortal, pleading for help from the only other near-immortals he knows. 

He says, “if I stand…then maybe some of them might live, maybe not many, maybe not for long, but then who does?” This in the context of him having seen many mortal generations grow old and perish—but he has always hoped not to harden his heart to ephemeral humans. And me, as I get older and crankier I retain such hope too. The Doctor remained loving. The Bible says “Greater love has no man…” 

(Private note to young precious fans: Peter Capaldi and I are old enough to remember when the TV ending credits listed “Doctor Who,” so that can be a time lord’s name, a name used by Peter in TV interviews)

~From the other sister, with her superpower here (the sing-along-version) is her most famous song.

~And OK, I’ve linked to her before, but here is Jewel’s most famous song.

Sad and Gay URLs

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Cheerful Note: This is the closest I’ve ever come to a “Merry Christmas!” gift post.

Note on links: For this post, in my mellow mundane life, I surely have plenty of time to place super-quick (for you) colored links, but no-o-o-o. I have NO desire to offer links on a silver platter, and no felt need to encourage search engines (SEO) to find me. 

(As explained in No Links is Good Links archived July 2012)

Hello Reader,

Got gay links?

I once did an essay on bringing “brights” into work and play, such as sneaking a rubber fish into the water cooler, called Brights in a Grey Life, archived December 2013.

Similarly, sometimes I like to brighten my posts at the end by footnoting a link. Most of my foot-links are gay, some are grey. 

In order to easily find my links again, I have slowly gathered most of them to this one blog page, trying to group similar links together. I thought you might like this post, so I have added some partial explanations. 

(Complete explanations would be found in the original essays)

Of course, the comforting moon has a dark side, and some of the links are darkly sad. An example would be this top link, 

(I assume you know to copy and paste into your search or website header)

a lengthy news article, complete with photographs, about an award-winning teen hero, who is bullied

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-48065405

Homeland Songs

Charlotte Church sings I Vow to Thee My Country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxUp08IK_g

The Pogues sing Dirty Old Town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK99y22uLv8

Billy Bragg sings Jerusalem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMC08TyvGNk

Billy Bragg sings A Full English Brexit song (a pun on ‘full English breakfast,’ as distinguished from a ‘small continental breakfast’)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07X_yk1v8S4

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 

Pictures of Road Signs, hacked by an artist

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-46139025

Doctor Who, three songs without a chorus

In a tune, the purpose for having a chorus is like why the 6 o’clock TV news has an anchor: For the comfort of returning to something known. Mornings while shaving, I like to hear three lyrical videos in succession. Because these songs don’t have a “proper” chorus, and are repetitive too, they might seem boring to you. 

But not to me, not when I am deeply moved by the episodes the songs are from.

1. Abigail’s Song, a live stage version by an opera singer
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGilpd0e4s

(… And for my preferred version of Abigail’s Song that does show the plot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Radrh60tAUk. )

(2) in Latin, here’s the song the gentle Ood sing for the tenth doctor to “sing him to sleep” at the end of his story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs_isWP71FE

(3) “The Long Song” with still photos from the episode where religious people sing. Their song had been constantly sung for generations…

The sad, defiant words on screen at the end were by the doctor, “nothing left, only me,” as the last of his kind. He’s “the last” because he killed his entire home planet—men, women and children—to save the universe from the Daleks. Hence he is not quite sane. He often tries to have human companions with him so he doesn’t go totally mad… and also to make sure he doesn’t become emotionally closed off and dead to the universe. Song link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPisDzhYrCg

Songs On Stage

On stage, a seasoned Jonie Mitchel (Companion of the Order of Canada) sings Both Sides Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQSlH-LLTQ

At the proms, Dame Judy Dench sings Send in the Clowns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZex3Qf7QQ

At the proms, from War of the Worlds, two very powerful songs, with some narration by Sir Richard Burton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvm7HgkNL7E

*** *** Start Doctor Who *** ***

Context for award-worthy Speech clip:

War is grim: Earlier in space and time is the War Doctor, played by John Hurt. In his life where he destroys his home planet, he is never given a number because his later incarnations want to forget they were ever him. He once met Doctors 10 and 11 together: “the one who regrets and the one who forgets” (the number of children present on that final day)

Speech clip, four minutes, (filmed in one take)

With his war doctor background, one of the most powerful speeches is by the 12th doctor, the “Zygon Inversion speech,” where the Zygon in human guise, Bonnie, symbolizes all sorts of violent revolutionaries… including Quebec FLQ “pure wool” separatists who won’t admit (according to former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) 

that other Quebecers, not “pure wool,” would some day want to separate from Quebec in turn. 

I grew up hearing periodic tests of atomic air raid sirens: During the speech clip, two horrible opposing boxes, set up by the doctor, symbolize the “The Button” of the cold war, as well as symbolizing every “go/no go” point of “peace/or war.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP9o4BEziI

Regarding the episode and the speech:

Giovanni Magnus

2 years ago

I think this episode was broadcast at just the right time; following the Paris Attacks and on the day before Remembrance Sunday. With so much talk of revolution and vengeance, something like this hits home.

*** *** End Doctor Who *** ***

Youtube songs

England swings. The song that starts, “Pendulum swings like a pendulum do, bobbies on bicycles two by two,”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip6pHbAmjiU

Music Video by Winnipeg’s Crash Test Dummies

Mmm mmm mmm mmm 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTeg1txDv8w

Music video, Superman’s Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeyhKWjQaKk

For isolation, a Simon and Garfunkel song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6iFNk60xP0

 

One-page funeral article on a very small service for a writer once very well known, Eric Nicol

https://bcbooklook.com/2012/09/16/authors-remembering-eric-nicol/

Speech, impromptu, with music, by Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, on the night Martin Luther King was murdered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs

Special note: Even in our 21st century, I can still feel sad from knowing that if Senator Robert Kennedy had lived, and become president, then he would have got us out of Vietnam. Swiftly. Without any patience for stupid well-meaning excuses about how hard and lengthy it would be to extricate such a mass of men and material.

Note: a John Denver song includes the lines, “and your mother called last Friday, Sunshine made her cry;” the music from the movie Sunshine is used under the above speech. I think the film was first shown on TV, but I forget, it was all so long ago. I read the book, back in the day.

Song, of Abraham, Martin and John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxAFq_9Mak

Lengthy blog page about a lonely “digital nomad” world traveler, to which I linked for the sake of a small quote about belonging, near the end.

https://www.fluentin3months.com/vagabond/

Anya, with no last name:

The four video links here are in my essay, Anya, Friend of Buffy 

(But I should have called it Death of Anya to get hits and match my Death of Buffy piece) 

where I explain WHY Anya fears bunnies, and why that fear leads to her friend Buffy fighting her with a sword.

Note: Anya was born human, and is finally human again, but after being a vengeance demon for about a millennium, she has forgotten mortality, hence her monologue:

Anya, ‘death of Joyce’ monologue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ96c7IOIPQ 

Very short light Song, of Anya’s paranoia of bunnies

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLMaSII_URU

Light Duet, by Anya and her live-in fiance “I’ll never tell”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooD4mmmYrTg

Anya’s cheery upbeat death song, from living with her fiancé, reminding us that after many horrible centuries, she finally had a happy life, with dreams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2QYSvca40

Drama clip, 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from just outside the doorway, overhears the two grown men in her life, her librarian father-figure and her vampire boyfriend-figure, state the grim, iron prophecy that she is to be killed. So she goes into shock, laughing an unnatural laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCOZSMpILQ

(Incidentally, my most popular essay, by hit count, is Death of Buffy from January 2012

https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2012/01/the-death-of-buffy.html )

Youtube

Bonnie Rae, with Bruce Hornsby

I can’t make you love me, if you don’t

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTIu4UbkK94

Sting, from a few years before the Berlin Wall ‘came a-tumbling down’:

Russians (“What can I do to save my boy, from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs

(Note for nonChristian readers: The “tumbling down” phrase comes from a rousing spiritual song, which I memorized as a boy, where “fought” is pronounced as “fit”: Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the wall came a-tumbling down.)

Lengthy essay with photographs. A writer who has been to Dachau takes his daughter to see an empty old missile silo and talks to her on the drive back, without meaning to scare her.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/12/21/a-month-of-writers-day-seventeen-jay-lake/

News Story, interview on television

London Marathon staff being abusive to slower runners

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-48130690/london-marathon-pacesetter-says-slower-runners-abused-on-course

Trailhead for news stories, where a pretty young actress, who has lived all her life in her dear mother country of Taiwan, on the island of Formosa, hopes her country would never be annexed by big China, not like how big Germany did an Anschluss of Austria.  

(The annex was during the Third Reich; Austria, with its German-speaking culture, regained independence after WWII) 

The link was made regarding ideology in an essay on how to hack together a speech.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46250674

Prose, read aloud 

British Actor David Tennant, in his own voice, reads his forward to the autobiography of actress Elizabeth Sladen, better known worldwide as Sarah Jane Smith. Takes six minutes and has lots of stills. “She inspired absolute devotion from everyone who worked with her.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUNDkw3KBVM

Lengthy Open Letter to Brazil, calling on Brazilians to reform because of shortcomings including

(—but my lawyer insists I add ‘but not limited to’ because he says you might not know what the word “including” means—)

the sort of “amoral familism” we see (or once saw) in southern Italy, but not in northern Italy.

https://markmanson.net/brazil

Youtube of a lengthy memorial at my club for Michael Cody DTM

For ease of download by dial-up, my blog has no bells or whistles, no photographs of me. But as for what I look like: Near the end that’s me on camera asking about Michael’s belt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLC5VizmSk&feature=em-upload_owner

Sean Crawford

Calgary,

Merry Christmas readers,

2019

Footnotes:

~Today’s blog has a lighter page of URL’s. You may have seen the “heavier, darker” sequel to this post which was archived back in September 2019.

~How queer, to think the “new, exciting” World Wide Web is no longer “new.” In fact, social media-wise, I have heard that Facebook is now only for the “older generation.” (People over 30) 

Back when the web was exotic, newspapers would feature reviews of URLs. 

(And I suppose even the folks with computers would have FOMO) 

It’s been years since they reviewed Internet sites. Now they only review video games.