Monday morning

23 January 2017

— a dozen gray wood doves patrolling the backyard like a flotilla of war ships.

Good Morning All,

I’m kicking myself sideways for not going into Copenhagen on Saturday to join the march from outside the U.S. Embassy to the Houses of Parliament Building Christianborg. Over 5,000 people did. That’s about 1% of the population, which is pretty good!

How pleasant is the irony that Donald No Trump managed to succeed where Hillary failed, namely to rally the women of America (and the rest of the known world) to stand up and be heard. (The worst single comment I read in the weeks before the election was uttered by a thirtyish woman who said she could not vote for Hillary because Hillary was not her kind of feminist. I wanted to call her up and ask, “So, Trump is your kind of feminist?)

Anyway, it gave me much good heart to read about all the marches and to know that Johs and Holly, Max and Judy, and Maeve were in attendance.

One of you, who shall remain nameless, a Saskatoon resident who happens to have the same first name as Hamlet’s mother, wrote the other day to say proudly that she never reads the included poems, but likes these introductory notes. 

I do hope she breaks her rule and reads today’s poem from Derek Walcott, a Caribbean poet who won the 1992 Nobel Prize. It’s a poem that says it is actually okay to like yourself. For me, as yet a card-carrying Congregationalist, that has always been a challenge.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron