don't worry, be canada...

So we didn't make it to the podium, but Canada ranked in the top 10 (just barely) on the recently released "World Map of Happiness." The site features an interactive map of the world, complete with floating 'ranking' info, and a full breakdown of the data used by the researchers at the University of Leicester who put together this rather marvellous piece of socio-cartography. Of course the Northern Europeans top the list, although Denmark, land of mad and semi-suicidal literary monarchs (..."to be or not to be happy"??) is the happiest place on earth. Go figure...

what literary and political journalism requires... (thank you jk)

"It was while working with her (Barbara Epstein, editor of NY Review of Books, died June 16, 2006)) that I learned the most valuable lessons of our friendship. I began to see more clearly how literary and political journalism requires much more than the creation of harmonious and intellectually robust sentences; how it is linked inseparably to the cultivation of a moral and emotional intelligence; how it demands a reasonable and civil tone, a suspicion of abstractions untested by experience, a personal indifference to power, and, most importantly, a quiet but firm solidarity with the powerless." Pankaj Mishra

Thank you to JK, who forwarded this quotation to me.

collective sigh...

It seems I never tire of neglecting this space only to sporadically return long enough to apologize for my absence. Well...here we go again. It's been a busy month, with the start of a new job, a trip to Toronto (sorry if I missed you, it was mostly business), and other personal miscellany. And then there are the more grave matters of world geo-political combustibles, another case of the border-skirmish blues (whites and reds optional), and off we go again, cameras in tow into the crucible of G-d (or God or Allah or whatever).

Cue 'collective sigh'.

I am not competent to weigh in on the specifics of this latest episode in the "never ending conflict," but on a purely human level it cannot do other than deeply trouble me, as I believe it does us all.

I'm not one to go in for organized religion (or any of its dogmatic accessories), but I will offer the only thing I can, a hope for hope in the form of a simple prayer for peace (unsure as I am how to pray in the 21st century).

I don't know what else to write for the time being, and maybe there is little more to say tonight. This is my small offering in place of big ideas. I'd like it to count for more than another exhalation in the collective sigh, because the last thing I want to do is resign myself to the world as it presently is. We are all much better than this.