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Coprolites in Amber (etc.)
Introduction: I am not a hoarder. Yet like many geriatrics, I have accumulated more than my share of junk. Also, like many of this age, I have been beset by nightmares of my children sorting through that junk in my permanent absence. Upon retirement in early 2015, I began to clean up. Much of my…
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20. Celebrating Mixed Marriage
Within a week of marrying in late December 1984, my Zimbabwean wife, T., and I arrived at Heathrow Airport enroute to Canada. The female immigration officer who checked our passports had reddish grey hair and a severe expression. She resembled Maggie Thatcher. “And what is your relationship?” She glanced stonily between faces and photos. “Husband…
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19. Shock in the Mirror
In a recent rereading of Orwell’s ‘1984’, I found the most chilling passage to be the same one that had left me shivering at the age of sixteen. That is the description of Winston Smith’s first look at himself after prolonged torture. O’Brien, his confessor/torturer, orders him to remove his filthy clothes and step forward…
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18. Poems from a Self-imposed Captivity
I may well have a tin ear for poetry. Yet over the years, I have sporadically tried my hand at writing it. My first attempt was a booklet of poems made at the age of fifteen. The self-illustrated cover depicted a hand clutching towards a thorny rose. The only piece I remember from that effort…
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17. Away from the Screens and into the Street?
I have always believed that hardening of arteries is far less dreadful than the narrowing of the mind. As a septuagenarian, I’ve tried to resist the creeping conservativism too often typical of advancing years. While no raging grandpa, I like to think that through the decades, my politics have tilted evermore leftward. Still, I increasingly…
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16. A Grave Matter of Conscience
I had hoped that ‘Notes on Exodus and Exile’ (April 2024), would be the last reflections on the Israel/Palestine conflict I would post on this site. I had thought there was nothing to add. But in the deepening horrors of the last few months, no other global issue has more heavily weighed on my mind……
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15. Apollo 11: Flashbacks and Jump-cuts
In the visually stunning non-narrative documentary, ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (1982), a Saturn 5 rocket is shown blasting off in slow motion. Against doom-like organ chords of the Philip Glass score, white flakes of insulation are shown drifting down through swirling fire. The title of the film translates as ‘world out of balance’ from the language of the…
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Coprolites in Amber (etc.) 