Hamilton Spectator Archives – Page 31 of 45

Once, there was a poor, young girl …

2 Comments / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns, Popular / December 15, 2012 / 2012, African culture, childhood, children, Christianity, Christmas, Froese biography, Jesus Christ, Mary, poverty, spirituality, suffering, Women's rights / 4 minutes of reading

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Once there was a little Ugandan girl who loved school.

The girl, who had been an orphan when she was younger, loved learning new things and making new friends and pretty well everything about it, especially the stories.

Maybe she loved school all the more because of her years as an orphan, which started in a hospital in Mbarara, in western Uganda, where she was left abandoned when she was barely larger than a cat.

There she was given all she ever owned, her name, Hannah.

Once, there was a poor, young girl … Read More »

Where words, mere words, mean trouble

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / November 3, 2012 / 2012, African culture, African politics, David Cecil, East-West relations, gay rights, homosexuality, human rights, suffering, Uganda, Ugandan art and politics, Ugandan politics / 4 minutes of reading

The official charge is ignoring orders of a public official. But the real problem is words. Just words.

You know, words can be enough. Too much, even, when they say this and that; when they’re relevant and lacerating; when they’re passed to others and speak more than anyone even realizes; when they speak truth that isn’t just truth to be understood, but that deeper truth that causes a lump in your throat because you know someone has experienced it with some amount of pain.

Where words, mere words, mean trouble Read More »

Back-to-school time — in Uganda

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / September 13, 2012 / 2012, childhood, education, travel / 4 minutes of reading

We’re in the air again, my family and me and today’s newspaper.

This time it’s the Daily Telegraph, dominated on Page 14 by a large ad for the latest iPad. Beside it, a smaller story on how one in four U.K. teachers wouldn’t send their own kids to the schools they teach in. And below, a brief about a Pediatrics Journal study that shows obese youth don’t think so well.

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New hope not to become a moron

1 Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / August 4, 2012 / 2012, education, Froese biography, satire, travel, vocation / 4 minutes of reading

SANTA FE, N.M. I’m in America’s oldest state capital, in Café Olé, with a sandwich and drink and new hope to never become a moron.

Here for some postgrad studies, I’m also enjoying a recent copy of America’s satirical news tabloid, The Onion.

“Nation’s Morons March on Washington State,” is its banner headline. Thousands of morons, the Onion reports, recently marched in Washington State thinking they were actually in Washington, D.C.

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Pushing back at health care’s pressures

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / June 30, 2012 / 2012, healthcare / 4 minutes of reading

So, my mother recently had brain surgery. Then it was the bum’s rush out of hospital. No need to wait, to monitor, to make sure. Keep ’em rolling. Free the bed.

Such are the system’s pressures.

What if something goes wrong back home? Call 911. This is what I was told.

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What it’s all about in 10 words or less

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / May 19, 2012 / 2012, Christianity, civil rights, religious freedom, spirituality / 4 minutes of reading

So what would Jesus say?

I mean about this debate on T-shirts that bear his name, and freedom of expression and religious tolerance and these sort of very Canadian things.

The opinions have arrived in a crazy roll, thanks to the Grade 12 Nova Scotian suspended, then returned, then pulled from his school by his father, all because of his bold T-shirt that says “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

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Not with a bang but a whimper

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / April 28, 2012 / 2012, Berlin, Joseph Kony, social media, technology / 4 minutes of reading

BERLIN – So Hitler was called to lurk among us. And never showed. Not even in Germany.

This regarding Kony 2012, the strange and shrinking campaign that in its posters — now hung virtually nowhere — features Hitler idling behind warlord Joseph Kony and Osama bin Laden.

The square-moustached megalomaniac has made a bigger splash online. On YouTube, an impersonator of the führer is enraged over the world’s apparent inaction against Kony. “Get my laptop,” he tells his generals, with English subtitles, in this satirical video with a million views.

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Waiting and watching on the Arab Spring

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / April 2, 2012 / 2012, Arab Spring, East-West relations, Walid al-Saqqaf, Yemen / 4 minutes of reading

KAMPALA, UGANDA – The times, they are a changin.’ Maybe. Sort of. Well, we live in hope, anyway.

I think of it while on Skype with Walid al Saqaf. We’re talking to catch up, about Yemen and censorship and technology and other things.

Walid is a Yemeni journalist who has been noted in this space in the past. We were colleagues in Sana’a while Walid was publisher and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times. I worked at his side.

Waiting and watching on the Arab Spring Read More »