Time To Say Good Bye
Time To Say Good Bye is an operatic duet performed by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. It is music of such soul-piercing beauty that I don't want to meet the person who can listen to it and remain unmoved. I remember it playing in Madison Square Garden as Wayne Gretzky took his final laps around the rink, the greatest performer in the history of team sports humbly acknowledging the tidal wave of tribute pouring down upon him. I remember The Great One gazing up at his lovely wife, Janet Jones-Gretzky, as she sobbed uncontrollably in the stands.
And now it is time for Packer fans to say good bye.
Hiatus
I have been blogging for a year and a half and have addressed matters of history, culture, policy, and sports, with columns ranging from the deadly serious (a three-part series on the Virginia Tech. Massacre), to the political (two-part series on Separation of Church and State), to the adventurous (back-packing through Glacier National Park).
Right now I need to pull back a bit. I don't plan to stop, and if Brookfield Now will still have me, I will continue as matters of interest present themselves. At some point I may return to a weekly schedule, but in the interim there will be fewer columns. Given that, I would like to devote some of them to matters of interest to you. So let me know what those topics might be.
Unde Malum - Unde Bene? A Happy Easter to You and Yours
I took Thursday off to make a long Easter weekend, and since I always try and have a good book in progress, I went to the library in search of same. I came away with a copy of Unspeakable - Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, by Os Guinness.
Guinness is a graduate of Oxford and has an intellect that can only be described as superior. Raised in China by his medical missionary parents, they fled the genocide of Mao's Cultural Revolution, to which Guinness lost two beloved brothers. When he writes of terror and genocide, he does so from personal experience. This book was written in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, and its premise is a wholistic look at what proper views of and reactions to evil might be.
Tomorrow
I spent Saturday morning attending the final tours of our High Schools and did my best to answer whatever questions people had about the referendum. I did not offer advice or direction; I wanted to make myself available for questions. I enjoyed speaking with one gentleman who, while acknowleding the schools needed a lot, told me why he was not going to support this plan.
Based on all I have heard and seen, I believe that is one issue upon which there is near unanimity - that the high schools are in need of some significant investment. How much and what kind is obviously the question. I have maintained for the last several years that the question of "what to do" is one on which reasonable people can, should, and obviously do disagree. I have also remarked that this question of "what to do" is like Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot - a complex and seemingly unsolvable puzzle, with no single solution being attractive to a significant majority of our community.
