Revision of time. Renewal of hope.

Morning sun refreshes color across the lake.

Shadows quickly fade as light brightens the trees.

An arc of rays drifts through the leaves.

The sound of gentle waves echoes down the shore.

Birdsong fades as the feathered flock lets morning come.

No motorized noise disturbs this spectacle.

New day. Renewed purpose. Revised life.

Revision of time. Renewal of hope.

Today will be a very good day.

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South: The Endurance Expedition by Ernest Shackleton.

I was feeling depressed, mired in doldrums that kept me encased in a room without windows. This 2 year Pandemic with it’s restrictions on life, as well as some personal dramas, made me, a usually eternal optimist, wonder if there was any opening or escape from this dark box. The right book can always alleviate some of those pressures. The book I’m now reading reinforced for me the fact that no matter how bleak life may seem, others have lived through far worse predicaments and seemingly hopeless periods. One such book is Ernest Shackleton’s account of his epic struggle in the Antarctic in 1914, when his ship ‘Endurance’ got locked in ice and destroyed. The book details the survival of him and his 22 crew as they fight impossible odds, surviving on seal and penguin meat/blubber whilst never giving up hope and never stopping to find a way out. His writing is quite excellent, rife with gems such as this:

“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.”

I highly recommend “South, The Endurance Expedition” to get you out of your dark space and into the light. It’s never as bad as you think it is.

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Canada’s top paid CEOs will earn the average yearly income by noon on Jan. 4

By the time most Canadians settle back into their work-from-home offices on the first working day of the year, Canada’s top CEOs would have already made the average worker’s salary — $53,482 — according to new research from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

The report said the average top-paid CEO would have made that average income by 11:17 a.m.ET Monday, about an hour later than the previous year. It also found that in 2019, the average top Canadian CEO made 202 times more than the average worker in the same year, which was down from a record 227 times the previous year. (David Lao, Global News)

Now that is just way too messed up! I’ve always been a staunch supporter of the western world’s capitalist democracies and a firm believer in the upside to working hard and being duly compensated for your effort. But the more news items I see about the increasing disparity between the haves and have nots, the more I bend toward the need for equity. I’m not talking about a 50/50 split. Of course executives merit their high pay, but when the difference in pay is so vast one has to step back and reconsider. It is a mind blowing statistic and just adds fuel to a left wing socialist force that will gather more and more steam as we continue sinking into a pandemic chaos. Or not. Prognostication is thrown right out the window now. Who knows where 2021 will head? (Yes I digress, but hey, it’s my blog!) All the kumbaya feeling about positivity is a tad misplaced from this writer’s POV. As much as I want to see light at the end of a tunnel, I think the start of 2021 will be horrible. Crates of vaccines will spoil as we wrestle with logistics and the supply chain. Covid-19 numbers will rise at least through the Spring. Our LTHC residences are again experiencing outrageous death because…. Well why exactly? You’d think that after 2020 and the scathing report from our Canadian military we would have immediately protected our seniors. But hey, we are still allowing flights from overseas, at least until January 7th, without any Covid testing of passengers! Fill up the country with Covid tourists so we can use up all the excess vaccines we have bought.

Once we do get through the first half of this year, we will enter a prolonged period of growth and comfort. Especially if Georgia elects two Democrat senators. Tomorrow promises to be even more exciting than the US Presidential elections from last November. Keep your fingers crossed and hold your breath folks. By now you have likely seen on the news how the exiting President has been caught on tape trying to force Georgia’s electoral official to rejig the results of the vote in his favour. It is beyond mind boggling how out of touch the exiting President is! Amazing. Outrageous. Almost comedic. Desperate for sure. The guy is in full bore panic.

Have a great pandemic day y’all!

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“The Times They Are A-Changin'”

Bob Dylan

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

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