I’m back, dear readers. I wanted desperately to try and contribute something here for the 80th anniversary of VE Day, but due to life’s unfolding tapestry, I was not able to do so in time. The UK government set up a wonderful website about the commemorations and I contributed a bit to it here, about my uncle. Very delighted to have been included - there are so many touching contributions from others across the Commonwealth. Please have a look.
It has been a busy spring so far, and I worked at a returning office during Canada’s recent federal election, making it busier. I also got sick - I am chipper now - and spent three nights (including one waiting in emergency) at the hospital. I am grateful for the excellent care I got, the hard-working doctors and nurses, the hospital cleaning staff and the adorable volunteers (I guess they don’t call them Candy Stripers these days). The latter came to my room with puzzles and word games and appeared surprised - and giggly - when I peppered them with questions about themselves. I was in awe - they were both in high school. At that age, I would not have had the confidence or poise to go from room to room, as they did, and chat with vulnerable strangers. But the night in the emergency ward? Let us say there was something profoundly Soviet Union-y about it. That is all.
So Donald Trump! He doth bestride this narrow world like a Colossus. In Canada, he helped Mark Carney - a lucky son of a gun if ever there were one - get elected. Trump has also encouraged along an impressive reversal of left and right in his own country and elsewhere on this planet. I had to laugh reading about the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, in which Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joan Baez travelled across America and screamed and sang about stuff while spectators wearing caps that said, “Make America Respected Around the World Again” cheered at their inanities. (I’m not saying Trump doesn’t spew inanities. He certainly does. But his foes do, as well.) Make America Respected Around the World Again? Seriously? Since when did any hippie ever care about America being respected? They hate America. Also, they’re free-traders now. When did that happen? In France, you have the right-of-centre parties being (ostensible) defenders of Israel while the left goes the way of every young half-wit in a keffiyeh at an Ivy League school. Ditto Italy. The antisemitism on the global left has been an issue for decades, though many have not wanted to see it. It can no longer be denied. Of course, the extremes of both left and right share much - conspiracy theories, antisemitism, contempt for the West, lack of trust for institutions, and so on. I try to remain positive and look at the long game: world orders change, and that is what we are witnessing. We do not know where it will lead.
Attempted optimism aside, these tariffs are nonsense. I find myself in the odd position - for me - of actually checking where grocery items were made before I buy them. Since I believe in trade that is as free as possible, my policy has always been to get the best product at the optimal price. Now…not so much. By the way, the late Pope, Francis, donated his pope-mobile to be a clinic for the children of Gaza. Yeah, he did. Not for the children of Sudan - where an actual genocide is happening - or for the children of Ukraine or for the Christians being slaughtered in various countries. So what I am trying to say is I might possibly be in favour of tariffs on pope-mobiles.
For what it is worth, there was an awful lot I liked about Francis - though if I am rating popes, the two best of my lifetime were John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And I am hopeful about Pope Leo XIV (though my wish was for an Innocent or a Julius). I saw his brother interviewed this morning and he said that Leo was always a goody two-shoes, that he would never follow his brothers into naughtiness and that they teased him about being “holy.” Ha ha. The jokes on them! But no more Chicago pizza jokes, people. They are already getting old.
Not unrelated to papal matters is the magnificence of the television series Wolf Hall. I had wanted to write at length about it prior to its finale a couple of weeks ago, but my wee sojourn to a hospital bed got in the way. If you can stream both seasons, you must. Along with L’Amica Geniale, it is the best television series in I do not know how many years. In both cases, you should also read the books, but I am not a snob about television when it is done well. And Wolf Hall is extraordinary. Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell deserves all the awards - though not an intelligence award, since he is an anti-Israel celebrity twit - and Damian Lewis comes close to dethroning Robert Shaw in A Man for All Seasons as the best screen Henry VIII. Above all, this is a tale of regrets, of guilt, of arrogance, of mistakes that come back to haunt you, of thwarted love and longing and, though it might seem odd, of the trap-laden labyrinths of office politics. There is a scene where Cromwell, locked up in the Tower of London, is confronted by, essentially, his co-workers: assorted dukes and archbishops and lower aristocrats (but none so low as son-of-a-blacksmith Cromwell). On the surface, it is a discussion. In fact, though, they have compiled a list of unrelated things he has said over the years and projected nefarious meaning and motive to every comment. It actually reminded me a bit of when I was teaching in Japan and was called in by two managers. Neither of them liked me and they were mostly bringing up silly things I had said outside work, giving my words intention they never had. I finally said, “Do you have any comments about my teaching?” They had none, other than that I was good at my job. So I was spared being beheaded - er, fired. Not so, Cromwell.
Finally, I attended the Nova Exhibit in Toronto last week. Solemn, important, immensely sad. I was in line behind a high school group who started out boisterous and were subdued and quiet at the exit - similar to my experience, though I did not start out boisterous. I saw many of the kids crying as they made their way through the videos, panels and tables of items left behind by the over-400 peace-loving festival attendees who were massacred by Hamas. I learned from the teenagers’ chaperone that the group was made up of Jewish students from a local public high school. “Why not all of the high school students?” I asked. She looked at me as though thinking, “Lady, have you been paying attention?” GTA friends - please go and see this important event. We are fortunate to have it in Toronto.
[On a brighter note, spring is here. View from one of our windows. Photo credit: Rondi Adamson]
The Nova Exhibition is excellent. It is well worth going to. Virginia