I never intended to write a blog every day, but it has been a quite a few days since I last wrote anything. Truth to tell, I haven’t been feeling at all well since Thanksgiving (12 October). After preparing a large turkey feast, I had such a severe back ache that I felt nauseated and had to lie down perfectly still on my bed until the sick feeling and pain had subsided, missing a lot of the family get-together and some of the food.

I have discovered, after a visit to Conservapedia.com’s Bible project, that a chunk of the Church in the Benighted States seems to think that the Christian virtues of inclusiveness, charity and forgiveness that radiate from the New Testament I read may be no more than mistranslations, induced by liberal bias, of the capitalist free-market scriptures they consider authentic. As for authenticity, for its authority this project looks to what used to be called the Authorised Version (AV), or the King James Bible, which they call the King James Version (presumably, the Authorised Bible). Here is what the Conservapedia Bible Project has to say of it: In the United States and much…

Back in March Barbara gave me a button-up vest for my 65th birthday. The label said ‘large’, but it was far too small for my extra-large torso, so I thought it would be a better fit for Vish, Barbara’s husband, and suggested she gave it to him. She demurred, however, and told me that I was going to lose weight until it was the right size for me.

Today, I heard from a group of panelists on the CBC that it was improper to apply tests based on a Western worldview to determine if foreign-born Canadians returning from visits abroad were, in fact, who they said they were. This is because a Somali lady (Suaad Hagi Mohamud) who had been visiting relatives in Kenya could not answer questions such as, ‘When is your son’s birthday?’ and ‘What are the stops on the subway that you pass on your way to work?’.

I think I am now comfortable in my own skin. (Silly statement, isn’t it really? How can you be comfortable in anyone else’s skin — unless, perhaps, you’re Buffalo Bill, that serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs who skins his victims.)

One Sunday near the beginning of September is usually designated ‘Rally Day’ at Salvation Army places of worship in this country. Presumably that’s because it marks the day when all good soldiers ‘rally’ round the flag again after (sometimes) long absences over the summer months.