Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 98

Memorial Day

Today, at twelve noon, a parade will go past the end of my street, complete with the Hibernian Marching band of pipes and drums, and various convertibles with the veterans of many wars. The Pearl Harbor survivor, the oldest World War Two survivor - they’ll all be there.

I’ve been a pacifist for many years, but I’ll be there, too, and I’ll be applauding them and feeling extremely grateful for all they did - and relieved that it never became necessary for me to join up. This is, in large measure,

Why are we here?

I was talking with a client the other day about that scary question: what is it we are on earth to do? “If only I could discover my reason to be here,” she said, ‘then I’d know how to live.”

It’s a useful question to ask, of course, and we probably all should ask it on a regular basis, if only to be able to discount some of the obviously unworthy answers. For example, I’m pretty sure we are not on earth to be unkind to each other, victimize others, and to pollute the planet. This seems reason

Another way of life… or of living?

The other day the United Nations in New York City decided to celebrate indigenous peoples, and we were treated to pictures on our TV of people dressed in native American Indian garb of all sorts, from Peru to Seattle, chanting songs in the grand meeting chamber. It was an event designed to bring to the forefront the plight of those indigenous people world wide who have been crowded off their land, alienated, and killed, for generations.

This is good. But we must not miss the point.

Surely it’s

Government in a flap; should we care?

I’ve been interested by the week’s news that the British House of Commons has been in a state of uproar. The Speaker has been forced to resign (the first occasion for over 300 years) as a result of a furore about Members of Parliament padding their expenses.

What possible significance could that have for us? Well, the penalty for these errant politicos seems to be that they will be forbidden to stand in the next election. They won’t be sacked immediately, therefore, but they’ve been given noti

Sleep, that knits up the ravel’d sleeve of care

Shakespeare got it right. Sleep, which Macbeth famously says he has murdered, is ‘the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s balm’. It repairs, and knits up again that frayed sleeve of our minds that has been worn through during the labors of the day. But it’s also much more than this.

I’ve worked for decades on the way sleep can put us right with ourselves. Even if we don’t recall our dreams they still communicate with us about important things, working at a pre-verbal level. And even when w

A Whole New World

Today was graduation day at Curry College, where I work, and a bittersweet moment it is - always. Years ago I felt this even more strongly. The very first time I was due to see an entire class graduate, a class I’d been with through all four years of growth and development, I couldn’t bring myself to turn up on the day. I knew I was supposed to be happy for them, but I was also sad, sadder than I could easily admit, that the people who had made my heart happy - even when they’d been difficult -

Ever Wondered about Madame Blavatsky?

That’s probably not a question that comes your way every day, but it is a serious question. Madame Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophy movement which flourished in the last years of the nineteenth century and then on into the twentieth. The movement’s core beliefs have remained somewhat obscure - despite its huge impact on its generation - until now.

This new light is now being shed because Harvey Tordoff, scholar and poet, has worked tirelessly to extricate the teachings of the legendar

Memoir, redefined

The British press, which often is well ahead of the curve on things like this, is agog that Sarah Palin’s memoir is due out next Spring, a stunning $7 million having been handed over by HarperCollins for the privilege. It will appear at roughly the same time as George W. Bush’s volume about his ‘decisions’. They’re not calling that one a memoir, although Laura Bush is also doing something that might be given that name.

Ms. Palin has freely admitted that she has a collaborator on her project and w

Funeral Games

Just round the corner from my house are several funeral homes, and sometimes when I’m headed to the Armenian grocery for some fresh basil I run into small knots of mourners, chatting and having a smoke. What strikes me very often is that the women are sometimes dressed in attire that one might more usually see at a wedding. Tight silk tops, magnificent hairstyles, shoes with perilous heels, flared jackets, jewelry, and so on.

At first I wondered if this was something I had misunderstood. This w

Memoir and Memory

Working with one of my memoir writers recently we found she was having trouble with the chronology of her life story, and she began to bemoan the loss of her diaries. She had, she said, destroyed several of her diaries in a fit of boredom. She’d looked at them, declared there was nothing interesting inside those covers embellished with roses and lilies of the valley, or with spring flowers, and had thrown them out. Then she recalled that she’d stored some other diaries at her grandmother’s hou