The Western world is reportedly under siege. The putative invaders are immigrants; the actual infection is myopia and panic. The excuse is protection of one’s religion or culture (itself an astonishingly limited dimension in view of the diversity of existing society and the indisputable adversity to the invasion of religion in the affairs of government). There is baseless suggestion that giving famished people food to eat and occasional hospital care will devastate the economy.
The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a Requiem Mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had commissioned the piece for a requiem service on 14 February 1792 to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of his wife Anna at the age of 20 on 14 February 1791.
Earlier this morning the bulbous beads of crystal rain drizzled and languished on the drawing room window creating a chock-a-block cascade of intermingled drops that tarnished the spiralling greenery of the meadow and fields beyond. The damp grey clouds enveloped and smothered the landscape and river. It was a perfect day to remain indoors clad in woollen socks and a consoling sweater. Everything bespoke privacy and retreat. It was Nature’s moment of enforced contemplation and hopeful resurgence from the latest industry wrought by the complications of the summer solstice and unparalleled fine weather; a moment of doubt and doom, reaction and rebound.
A presidential debate is putatively of interest primarily because of its political consequence (though no one expects to hear specific platforms). What is anticipated with more certainty is the casting of dispersions by one candidate upon the other. The two opposing candidates are predicted to dissolve into confrontation and disagreement. Neither candidate is thought to dissuade or persuade any member of the audience. Instead the so-called debate between the candidates inevitably descends to mere conflict and hostility often without the benefit of either strategic logic or rhetoric argument.
It is Thursday June 27th, the day before the start of the long weekend. July 1st Canada Day is on Monday next. The sun is shining brightly and the weekend weather forecast extending into the following week is favourable. I expect that for many people the holiday weekend starts today. This means leaving work early, pleasing oneself to imagine escaping the brewing holiday kerfuffle which constrains those less fortunate who are bound to wait until Friday afternoon to ignite their gusto. If the bags and trunk of the car are not already packed, that duty will be performed at breakneck speed this afternoon. The ambition is to leave town by 2 o’clock at the latest and head to one’s destination. It is then that the festive spirit fully overtakes one’s sensibilities and the celebratory weekend officially begins. The well-earned sabbatical is time for rejoicing!
Health care is commonly one of the salient features of life and governance in any community. Lately it has been the subject of controversy arising on the one hand from accusations of regression and on the other hand from debate about looming privatization. I have experienced both public and private health care systems in Canada and the United States of America.
Canada may be able to deliver not only the must-haves like universal primary care but also the nice-to-haves like drug coverage for those currently falling through the cracks. It would just take some courage from politicians. There is an obvious way to find the money: it would simply require amending the Canada Health Act to make explicit that provinces would no longer be penalized if they allowed a small number of willing patients to buy quicker care so that provinces can loosen their rules. This would then free up scarce resources such that provinces could expand public drug coverage beyond their current programs. One might think of it as a policy swap whereby public coverage would be somewhat curtailed for hospital and physician services and somewhat expanded for drugs.
As anyone who’s seen the subway ads advertising clinics in Buffalo knows, we already have two tiers: those who can afford to leave the country for prompt care and those who can’t.
Josh Dehaas, “The Hub”
Opinions, like mosses, are imperceptibly constructed. They survive upon a modest nutrition of dampness. The progress of their development arises from multiple influences and often unrelated incidents much as the changing weather or other extraneous factors. And further like mosses, opinions grow without roots or flowers; yet their soft, green texture is sufficient to cover rocks, roads, gravel or cement.
As I confessed to the giant and frightfully affable auburn-haired and bearded attendant with whom I spoke earlier today at the car wash (deservedly he’s being trained for management), routinely driving my XT4 and getting it washed (whether it needs it or not) is for me a thoroughly pleasing preoccupation, one which exceeds anything else I have to do. And by the same standard, it is a privilege which I believe merits accreditation. My lassitude is I reckon both a favourable and an unfavourable admission by varying accounts; but it is irreconcilably the truth, one for which frankly I am smugly content. Mechanical precision is of no small consequence to me; and, motoring combined with open windows on a sunny day is in my view beyond compare.
Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21, 1688.
Accepted almost on his first appearance as one of the leading poets of the day, Alexander Pope rapidly became recognized as the foremost man of letters of his age. He held this position throughout his life, and for over half a century after his death his works were considered not only as masterpieces but as the finest models of poetry.
In a well-known passage of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, Pope has spoken of his life as one long disease. He was in fact a humpbacked dwarf, not over four feet six inches in height, with long, spider-like legs and arms. He was subject to violent headaches, and his face was lined and contracted with the marks of suffering. In youth he so completely ruined his health by perpetual studies that his life was despaired of, and only the most careful treatment saved him from an early death. Toward the close of his life he became so weak that he could neither dress nor undress without assistance. He had to be laced up in stiff stays in order to sit erect, and wore a fur doublet and three pairs of stockings to protect himself against the cold. With these physical defects he had the extreme sensitiveness of mind that usually accompanies chronic ill health.
It seems that about this time, 1713, Pope’s father had experienced some heavy financial losses, and the poet, whose receipts in money had so far been by no means in proportion to the reputation his works had brought him, now resolved to use that reputation as a means of securing from the public a sum which would at least keep him for life from poverty or the necessity of begging for patronage. It is worth noting that Pope was the first Englishman of letters who threw himself thus boldly upon the public and earned his living by his pen.
Excerpts From
Pope, Alexander “The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems”
Grandfather clocks, mantle clocks, carriage clocks, ship’s bells and complicated watches (all manual of course) have forever been a cherished purlieu of mine. Not only are they the object of my entertainment and attention (often a weekly mandate for winding or just supervising their remarkable precision and constancy), they represent a reliable, repetitive, predictable, measurable and manifest account of the passage of time rendered in a convenient and stimulating cast.