Wow! 2020 already. Time flies, fast, really fast. When I was 15 my imagination was convinced that by 2020 I would be in a fabulous retirement home… out amid the rings of Saturn. And we haven’t even been back to the Moon! Perhaps too much greed and too much poverty and too little adventuring has our humanity stuck in a rut.
I’m going to Italy this year. No more wishing and hoping because now the flight and hotels are booked and not only am I counting sleeps …. I leave in less than 2,000 hours.
If the rock that hit the Earth 66 million years ago had been just a little later, or a little earlier, we might not be here talking about it.
“They illustrate what happened in the seconds and hours after the impact, revealing that had the huge asteroid struck the Earth a moment earlier, or later, the destruction might not have been total for the dinosaurs. And if they still roamed the world, we humans may never have come to rule the planet.” — BBC Two — The Day the Dinosaurs Died
I was once almost eaten by a shark in the warm waters off Chicxulub. It was 1972 and I was on holiday in Mexico. We were spending a week in the Yucatan. After leaving Merida our concierge, driver, cook, and friend took us to his mother-in-law’s summer home on the beaches of Chicxulub. My spanish is not good and I thought we had rented the little cabin/hut in the back of the beach front property. “No, no esa cosa pequeña … esa casa grande!”
It was awesome. The sand, the art, the cool tiles, the warm sea … and it seemed that we had it all to ourselves. After a few days of our fabulous holiday, my partner had to go into town about the car rental, but despite the warnings I’d heard about swimming with a partner, I couldn’t stay out of the ocean and I went into those waves anyways. I’m splashing around about 100 feet off shore when I noticed a small boy on the beach, jumping up and down, waving, and yelling at me … “hola!” “What’s that you’re saying?” I swam back to shore but he ran away, up the beach, toward the nearby small town of Chicxulub.
My partner and I regularly walked into Chicxulub in the evening, where we ate street food and soaked up the ambiance. That night, as we walked along the beach, we could see there was quite a happening on the town dock, boats and trucks, lots of people, lights and action. It wasn’t long before we were at the scene and had it figured out. They were hauling a huge dead shark onto the dock. This was no baby shark. It was gianormous. Indeed I’m convinced it was the inspiration for the movie “Jaws” which was released only a few years later. When people talked about the movie I thought, that was nothing! You should have seen the monster we saw in Chicxulub!
Anyways, we left the dock and walked the short distance to a large restaurant we had planned to eat at on our last day in the Yucatan. We enter, and who is the first person I see? The boy who was on the beach that morning! He seemed really happy to see me and soon his Dad was ushering us to a table where he handed us a couple of menus. And there, on the menu, was the word the boy had been yelling at me that afternoon. Hola! tiburón! tiburón! tiburón! “
Then, in 1980, the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez, suggested the hypothesis that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by the impact of a large asteroid hitting Earth. And last year, ECORD, the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, launched an expedition to drill core from the crater peak of that event. Here is the web page.
Originally Posted: Jan 6, 2008. Yet another senseless murder of a young girl took place in Toronto. Perpetrators and motives will eventually be discovered … I think we can safely assume the values of our human-ness, our frailness, our hopes and peace were all missing from the street on which she was murdered on New Years Day, 2008.
Posted: Mar 20, 2009. _ Stephanie’s murderers were two: … the puppet master and the puppet.
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)
Published: Thursday, August 14 Victoria Times-Colonist 2008
Shirley Case with the International Rescue Committee was one of four aid workers killed in Afghanistan.
VICTORIA – Shirley Case, one of three foreign aid workers killed this week in Afghanistan, is being mourned by the people who knew her during her years in Victoria.
Case, a 30-year-old woman from Williams Lake, B.C., attended the University of Victoria and Royal Roads University. In 2000, she completed an undergraduate degree in leisure-service administration at UVic, then earned a master’s degree in human security and peace-building at Royal Roads in 2005.
WAINWRIGHT, Aline Gregory (nee MacGregor)
Born September 3, 1930 – Died April 9, 2008
Aline left us peacefully, at Hospice Niagara after a lengthy struggle with cancer.
Well remembered for her dedicated work as an active feminist, she was a co-founder of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in Canada. She was a member of Women for Political Action and in the 1972 federal election was a candidate in Rosedale Riding in Toronto. In 1975 she played a prominent role in organizing the first World’s International Women’s Year Conference held in Mexico City, and in 1977, was awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal.
Born in Toronto in 1930, Aline is predeceased by parents Alexander and Catherine MacGregor, by sister Catherine (Kitty) Mann, and by brothers John and Howard MacGregor. She is survived by husband John Wainwright, by brother Robert (Bob) MacGregor of Toronto, by daughters Catherin (Cody) Gregory of Victoria, B.C. and Deanne (Dedee) Gregory of Burnaby, B.C., by step-children John Wainwright of Edmonton, Deborah Jarvis of Grimsby and Jane Wainwright of Grimsby, and by grandson Garnet Clare of Whistler, B.C.
She will be deeply missed by family and friends.
An announcement will be forthcoming about an open house to celebrate Aline’s life at the St. Catharines Golf and Country Club, 70 Westchester Avenue, St. Catharines, Ontario.
In lieu of flowers, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society or Hospice Niagara would be gratefully appreciated.
“Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” – Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’
Most people thought Nietzsche was crazy before his time, 125 years ago, when his Madman ran through the village, lantern in hand, declaring that God was dead.
Well, if that diagnosis of the human enterprise was accurate _ and it was _ then it is just as applicable today as our endeavors persist in a world of our own making, despite our divine declarations to the contrary.
“He is a firm believer, all right: That religion is evil, and that, perhaps on the eighth day, man created … By Mark Rahner Seattle Times staff reporter Christopher Hitchens’ omnipresence does not in itself refute God’s existence. But it is evidence that his pugnacious best-seller, “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” (Twelve, $24.99), has struck a chord. I played devil’s advocate with the contrarian Vanity Fair columnist and busy TV pundit before his manifestation – uh, appearance, at Town Hall Seattle Thursday. Keep on reading!