Message
from a
pigeon
THE eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month … the end of the war to end all wars …
Sound the Last Post.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Reveille.
Well, it wasn't quite the war to end all wars. Another came along 25 years later. It brought us the atom bomb.
Meanwhile, according to Reuters, a pigeon in Australia has built a colourful nest in the vicinity of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in the federal capital, Canberra, where people will gather today (as all over the world) to honour the fallen in the war to end all wars and its successor.
Colourful because it has been using poppies from the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior to build its nest.
Is there not something pleasingly symbolic – even hopeful - in this?
Berlin Wall
THE war to end all wars, and its successor, were of course followed by the Cold War. And the Cold War ended almost overnight with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had its 30th anniversary last Saturday.
Mercifully, the Cold War never did become a Hot War. But – Oh boy! – flocks of wild geese flying into the Distant Early Warning Line of radar along the US and Canada coasts, momentarily scrambling the Nato nuclear bombers; the RAF's nuclear-armed V-bombers in the air 24 hours a day. A close squeak that lasted some 44 years.
Though it had its lighter moments. We had President Kennedy declaring defiantly in West Berlin, in the shadow of The Wall: "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
The West Berliners cheered him to the heavens. (They were too polite to tell him that a "Berliner" is a jam doughnut. So he was saying: "I am a jam doughnut!")
Yes, we have somehow survived. Yet today all kinds of tensions in Nato, that's kept the peace for 74 years. Suggestions that it's falling apart, redundant, brain-dead.
Hey, catch a wake-up fellers! Get a grip! Don't make a fool of that pigeon.
Fasten seatbelts!
A TREMOR suddenly runs through the US presidential election campaign. Multi-billionaire businessman and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg has thrown his hat into the ring to oppose Donald Trump.
Last Friday his representatives filed in Alabama for him to run in the Democrat primary. It seems Bloomberg – three times mayor of New York – is prompted by a concern that centrist Democrat hopeful Joe Biden is running out of steam; that his more radical competitors for the Democrat candidacy just don't have what it takes to defeat Trump.
Bloomberg set up the global financial services, software and mass media company that bears his name, and is not known for setting a foot wrong. He has joined The Giving Pledge, in which billionaires undertake to give away at least half their wealth.
Trump says there's "nobody I'd rather run against than little Michael".
Little Michael? The guy is worth more than $57 billion.
Fasten your seatbelts, folks!
Tailpiece
INTERVIEWER to job applicant: "Why this four-year gap in your CV?"
"Yale."
"Yale? I'm impressed. You're hired."
"Thanks. I really need this yob."
Last word
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask: "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me: "This is going to take more than one night." - Charles M Schulz
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