They say this is the worst May weather on record; I’m still losing seedlings to the cold. Scarce sunlight has not only stunted the garden, but my own moods can dip way down to ‘survival’ mode. TV and radio don’t work when I am depressed – but I can still escape into books.
When I feel adrift like this, I visit the world of my old friend, Philip Marlowe, who can never be defeated. It’s the need to believe that, no matter how desperate things seem, a brave and true hero will emerge to defeat the bad guys. Humankind carries a collective memory of this ‘hero myth’ which each of us adapt to our own version. With Marlowe, Raymond Chandler created a character very close to my own idealisation: a loner, with neither wealth nor back-up; a dangerous but sympathetic man; a warrior of the light, by nature unbeatable. Under his protection, I would fear no-one.
Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), is a masterful scoping of his territory; this is how it ends: “On my way downtown, I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again”. I wonder why I find this such a pleasing ending – why the hero of my choice, never gets the glory, the girl, or the money. Like everyone, I don’t really know what I’m like, or how I got here. Maybe the only thing we can never know.
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FT columnist, Simon Kuper, suggests this week that the US is becoming more European – with seven in 10 American millennials now saying they would vote for a ‘socialist’ by which they mean a Nordic social democratic type). No conscious emulation of Europe, but general disillusion with American exceptionalism allows Biden to push for a whole range of social benefits – paid for by taxes on the rich. Some people object that a more European US would cease to be innovative – that you can have wealth tax and ‘subsidies for inertia’, or you can have Silicon Valley. I don’t believe that, and anyway, it’s doubtful whether recent American innovations like Facebook and Amazon increase the sum of human happiness.
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Compared to many of my own friends, I know I’ve never been a true Bob Dylan fan, but I’ve never doubted the honesty of his voice or that it represents hope in the face of despair; a true poet. I got insight from this tribute by John Harris in the Guardian – who is a fan.
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This Conversation piece is by Vittorio Bufacci, a philosophy lecturer from Cork University; he believes that the ‘normal’ facing our economy is a failed model, producing gross inequality. He selects seven modern philosophers, with ideas to help us build a better world after the pandemic. The momentum for a fairer society gets clearer – but not the political route.
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Some of Scotland’s Third Sector Support has moved to Finance (to Junior Minister, Tom Arthur?) – much has simply disappeared. Let’s hope some kind of strategy will be revealed, but the silent scattering of Aileen Campbell’s portfolio is deeply worrying. Even more worrying is that the most ‘spirited’ protest came from a Housing Forum. Is our Third Sector leadership losing the fight? Does it even know it’s in one?
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“If Brexit is so wonderful, why does anyone need to be blamed for its consequences?” So asks Fintan O’Toole in this Irish Times piece. Normally, senior political figures would be ashamed to admit that they didn’t understand the treaty they had negotiated – but over the ‘NI Protocol’, Britain is now claiming it was bamboozled by wily foreigners.
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“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
