Echoing Toughts

I know.. same picture as before, but I like the cropped version much better.

Its been an introspective kind of day. I don't know whether to blame the late night viewing of The Shawshank Redemption, The cheesy Hillary Duff flick or several hours of listening to the Vitamin String Quartet. Perhaps it is the pretty close to all the time lightness that has through my internal clock for a complete loop.

Some of the thoughts, if not most, have been standard self examination of goals, choices, beliefs, philosophies and some the simple joy of listening to a violin's rendition of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" I feel like I've been told that one day I'll grow up and be 100% sure of who I am and what I want... yet watching those same questions play across the lives of my high school students I feel sometimes I aught to warn them that in reality, most people never answer those questions definitively. Perhaps for spans of time, you will feel certain of the answer - but every day of your life leaves its tracks on your soul changing you again and again... so how can the question "Who am I?" not come back to haunt you eventually. Thus far, my road has been a convoluted and winding one - and perhaps one question I might ask is of the egg and chicken variety. Is my failure to answer the question of who I am due to the winding road or is it the cause of it?

I think, when I was writing this post in my head while staring out the window at the horizon, that I had a lot more to add - that there were a few topics I wanted to explore in writing, but then I read a few articles in the Toronto Star and found some new things to blog about....

The government of Canada wasn't doing what they wanted fast enough, so 2000 of the Tamil people of Toronto walked onto the Gardiner (on Mother's day) and stopped traffic. Now, I gather from what I've read, that there are 2 sides to the story about what is going on in Sri Lanka and the truth is, as always, war is not pretty and I think this is a fairly nasty one with both sides having plenty of blood on their hands. I have no intention in taking sides with either group nor do I have any problem with a group lobbying the government through proper channels for attention to an international crisis. I think it is terrible that innocent people are dying and that even if they are surviving that their lives, communities and economies have been destroyed and I do sypathize with their family members here who are feeling powerless to help their familys back home. I just don't like their choice of tactics.

My concern is that this type of "negotiating" should not be tolerated in Canada. This is a lot like a bank robber or kidnapper making demands with a gun head to the victims head. Most concessions achieved from a party who negotiated under duress are carried out without enthusiasm. I don't know that this will buy them the willing ear of the federal government nor even the sympathy of the common Canadian or journalist. Very few people feel inclined to cooperate when demands are made of them in this fashion, in fact, given that the we have the police and army resources to easily remove the protesters from area - the only reason they are still there is because the governments are stalling until they come up with a politically palatable way to deal with the situation - and so the protesters have accomplished little other than to sour public opinion against them and annoy the very people they want help from. For all I know, the government is leaving them where they are on purpose to ensure public opinion is soured against them. After this demonstration, even if the government had been interested in doing something about the situation in Sri Lanka, they now will have to weigh their actions against public opinion and they probably do not dare to look as if they are giving into these kinds of demands. The protesters would have been far better off to get public opinion behind them in a positive way.

Sigh. Why can't people just get along?

And it is now nearly dark and I've rambled on longer than I planned. The sun is still without sunspots and it feels weird that it is May and yet still winter, but rarely night. I do have a nice little stockpile of pictures... so hopefully I'll kick the trend of intermittant blogging in Nunavut, at least a bit.