Category: life etc.
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HOPE IS MAKING A COMEBACK
This line from Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC really resonated with me, of all the wonderful happenings at the convention, which I watched with much relish from my home in Sussex England, this line left me with a hum, that gentle resonant sound from satisfaction and a warm caress of the soul in a…
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THE STATE OF POLITICS TO COME
… They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community… However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular…
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Sweet Spring
Spring… she’s round the corner from here! Lean out, a little further out the window… Ah! There she is! taking her sweet time too the cheeky little bugger. Making her gradual descent to greet us with that perfectly pitched temperature. Corralling the flowers and busying the bees, Coaxing the winter fairies to bed and readying…
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GENOCIDE
Genocide is a divisive word at the moment, we are quibbling over the appropriateness of its use and some people are struggling with the concept of what to term this ongoing bombardment of Palestine. Whether it’s an ethnic cleansing or genocide or a war… what we call it shouldn’t matter, but what it is, is…
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WE REALLY DON’T HAVE TIME
Three days after Christmas, I got a voicemail that my cousin had suddenly passed. It was one of those moments when I thought it was someone else who’d passed, someone with a same name to which I had no relation. Someone of a distant friendship. I listened to it five times before deeming to return…
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THE JANUARY BLUES SOOTHE
January with her cold shoulder and freeze is finally upon us, on the heels of the most delightful time of year; it seems a cruel joke that Christmas should be followed by such grey and cold and wet; ensconcing us in the thick of winter. A month of Mondays, leaving us in need of pick…
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WAR MAKES REFUGEES OF US ALL
I cannot debate the rights or wrongs of war because, besides not being aptly qualified, my simplistic view is that in most wars there are no right sides; a view that lacks nuance or allows for exceptions. Conflict hardly leads to lasting peace without creating silos of hate and terror and mistrust. So I cannot…
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ON DEATH
I have been surrounded by death a lot recently, loved ones pass so suddenly leaving us floundering in the aftermath. Life is fleeting at the best of times, temporal, and time so cruel it makes a mockery of us because we think we have enough of it to make the most of life with loved…
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HOLD SPACE FOR HUMANITY
There ought to be a creed before heading to the battlefield; in times of war hold space for humanity. I’m sure there’s a variation of it in some soldiers’ manual couched by that clause: collateral damage. Australia voted NO in its voice referendum; a referendum meant to recognise the First Nations people and to create…