Ideeahs

Over the last few weeks I have thought about how gift-giving has changed over the last few decades.  In some ways I find that the act of giving has become more virtual, generic and risk averse.  As a result exchanges have lost some of their mystery.  They've become less tangible somehow, less memorable.  They relay less about the personalities of the individuals doing the giving and receiving. As I child I used to go to my grandmother's house for Christmas. All my aunts, uncles and cousins were there. With so many of us present the presents spread out way beyond the shade cast by the fake silver tree.  Wrapped boxes with surprises waiting to be discovered were stacked all the around the back of the tree.  While some of the boxes did a poor job of masking their contents others were generic cubes. My cousins and I were especially fond of music and so many of the gifts under the tree took the shape of a flat, square record sleeve. We were left having to...

The Sandy Hook tragedy has sparked many comments from all kinds of people. Journalists, politicians, left leaning, right leaning, city slickers, country bumpkins, seniors, children, parents, the educated, the uneducated.....you get the picture.  Human beings of all colours, beliefs, ages, regions and backgrounds have commented either publicly or privately. Whether or not an audience read or heard our thoughts it is likely that, in the grand majority of cases, we all reacted with instinctive emotions - shock and sadness.  In the end, those instincts, the ones that unite us all as a species, shows an amazing amount of unity among the seven billion humans on Earth. Unfortunately, as the minutes passed from the time we heard the horrible news, our initial reaction of shock and sadness gave way to that other uniquely human characteristic - our ability to think, recall and imagine.  And so our divisions started showing. The need to defend.  The need to protect. ...

Hello there. A set of coincidences over the last few days has brought me back to the editor page on Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Ideas have started popping up again over the last week. Today I watched a movie....The Magic of Belle Isle. While I was watching the above movie I received notification that one of my oldest friends had just liked my Ideeahs page on Facebook. When I logged on to Facebook to look at my Ideeahs page there was a picture of Morgan Freeman, who happens to play in The Magic of Belle Isle, attached to a post attributed to him and commenting on the Sandy Hook tragedy. That event has really stirred my desire for expression. Good enough for me. See you tomorrow and hopefully for a good and long run. Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!