Hamilton Spectator

The view from 50,000 feet

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA ✦ I love my daughter, all 15 months of her, for many reasons. One is that she’s more like her mother than me. Especially while flying.

My wife Jean and I continue to be aid workers in the Middle East and Africa, so this is often. In fact, diaper-clad Elizabeth Katherine has already been on more than dozen flights and four continents.

The Squirt knows one word. Just one. It’s “hello.”

But words can be powerful things.

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Beautiful dreamers

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , , , / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – June 12, 2004)

HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ Back in Hamilton from our most recent work stint in Yemen, I see a litre of Coke is now cheaper than a litre of unleaded.

In fact, since Jean likes to shop around for gas prices she can live with, sometimes on empty, I’m worried I might soon have to push the car.

It seems that Saudi Arabia, old and shaky as the kingdom is, has us all by the family jewels. It knows that North Americans are addicted to their oil like a drunk to his bottle. Yes, the oil gods have granted two-thirds of the world’s proven reserves to Saudi and a few neighbours. Hardly seems fair.

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Only responsible sexual conduct will make a dent in AIDS deaths, STDs

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / / , , , , , , / 3 minutes of reading

We’re reading the papers in the heart of Africa and this is what we see: How a woman’s derriere needs the right jeans. Photo included. A cartoon of a married fellow who’d rather give up drinking than sex on the side. And a story about boda-bodas — the motorcycle- taxis everyone here uses — and how ladies of the night like to proposition drivers while on board. One driver says he gets headaches if he refuses.

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