Hamilton Spectator

The view from 50,000 feet

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

(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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Fighting for an education

Students should realize the struggles others in the world go through to get their schooling.
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Joy and magic

Teaching hockey to a Yemeni boy is what Canada s game should represent.
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Dying to give birth

Childbirth is killing poor mothers at the rate of 1,600 a day.
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Reflect on Calvary

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ resonates because it poignantly reveals God's mysterious love.
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Only responsible sexual conduct will make a dent in AIDS deaths, STDs

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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I’m safer in Yemen

Yemen is an arms bazaar, but has far fewer firearms than the U.S., with its almost one gun per person.
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Living fat, dying poor

As obesity becomes an issue in developing nations, I ask you this: Will you go hungry with me?
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The perils of prayer

You don't want to raise a generation that cares about others, do you?
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Surreal Saddam trial

Let's hope any pursuit of justice takes the highest road possible.
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We grow old when we stop laughing

The booby prize given by the U.K.-based Plain English Campaign for funniest remark last year by a public figure goes to U.S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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Skeptics can believe

Christmas doesn't ask, Who is Jesus? It asks, Who are we?
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What is truth?

In the Middle East there s as big a debate over the media as there is here. Some back Al-Jazeera and some CNN. And some read independent papers.
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Ideas live on after the man

Call me a dreamer, but ever wonder how things would look if John F. Kennedy was involved in today's so-called war of civilizations?
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