Another Labour
Day weekend when many of us start to think about putting gardens to bed and
preparing for a new school year. Even
though school has been over for decades for us we still get into that way of
thinking “new beginnings”. It’s amazing
what 12 years of habit can create for a lifetime. But then, they do say that we create habits
within 6 weeks so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that September means a new
page for most of us.
This summer has been a very unusual one
with an unprecedented State of Emergency throughout much of our province which
in itself has changed so many lives.
Even if we were unaffected directly by the flooding we were exposed to
the effects in towns, with our friends and in our businesses. Watching the City of Calgary rebuild itself in
a few short days to host the 101st Calgary Stampede was
incredible. Seeing the unbelievable
disaster in High River affected me in a very personal way and some of the stories
coming out of that town have made me question many things about media coverage
and cover up.
Through all of this we have also been
subjected to the national scandal of corruption in the senate and we have to
wonder what our government and our Prime Minister will do about cleaning things
up. As we now know Prime Minister Harper
does not deal well with duress; his solution to all things that go against him
is to take the ball and go home and pout.
Case in point, proroguing parliament for 6 more weeks is how he is
dealing with a bad situation – like we are going to forget what has been going
on for the last 6 months? One can only
trust to the sanity of our populace that they will be remembering this come
election time. Oh, and there is the
little question of why Canada is not boycotting the Olympics in Russia given
the sanctioned attacks on homosexuals. I
guess homosexuals simply don’t have the same human rights as, say, those people
in Syria?
I’m thinking about those political
questions, I’m thinking about human reaction to things and I am wondering about
grace under duress. We humans can be
brilliant one minute and then very ordinary, very apathetic, and very
uncivilized the next. It’s quite a
perplexing puzzle on the nature of humanity.
I wonder if one those caring persons are covered during the flood recovery
for instance, are the same folks that would turn into an angry mob in a
different situation or are those a whole different set of people? I’m not sure.
As my sister and I left the theatre after watching “The Butler” I
silently observed everyone leaving and wondered “how would these people behave
if a certain section of society was no longer viewed as One Of Us”? Would they still stay politically correct and
feel that it is wrong to attack a certain group for whatever reason, or would
they swing with the general feeling? I
really hope that it is the former, that there are enough of us who are brave
enough to always do what is truly right – knowing that all human beings have a
right to live as equals regardless of race, creed, gender, whatever.
It’s been a very intense summer for some
of us but definitely interesting in every way.
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