Lao Tzu said this in 525 BC when anxiety didn’t yet define an entire age of human existence.
But as temperatures boil over actually and politically, what has us in its thrall isn’t anxiety, but high anxiety. How else to describe Umair Haque’s mordant prediction that We’re Not Going to Make It to 2050. Or even the “best of times, worst of times” predictor, Max Fisher writing in The New York Times, who asked: “Has the world entered a time of unusual turbulence, or does it just feel that way?”
It turns out, it just feels that way. Fisher writes: “Consider the mid-1990s, a time that Americans tend to remember as one of global stability and optimism. If today were really a time of exceptional turmoil, then surely that world would look better in comparison? In reality, the opposite is true.”
Meanwhile…
1. A seamless trip through Pearson. Canada’s largest airport has a new hub to help you navigate the unfathomable. Or in their words, “help clear your path for a smoother journey through the airport.” Actually, it’s quite helpful.
2. An advance apology. Now why didn’t Rogers think of this?
3. Great pieces about odd things. Yoga is booming, but so is a curious subset, goat yoga. You didn’t know that Haute Goat has come to Port Hope, Ontario, complete with live goat cams? The question is, how do the goats feel about this? Plus, news on how the lost cities of the Amazon were finally found. Plus, NIMBY has a new clubhouse for you, the rise of transparent toilets, and why our bread is so bad.
4. The Fort Knox of museums. It’s nice to get on the ROM’s site and the AGO’s to see what’s in their showcases and their vaults. But why not go whole hog and click on to Google’s Arts & Culture site, which shows the work of 13,445 artists?
5. Are you walking 10,000 steps a day? That goal began not as a medical idea but as a marketing campaign in the 1960s as a predecessor to the FitBit. More recently, a Harvard study showed that women who walk 4,400 steps a day had a 41% reduction in mortality, and that these rates level off at 7,500 steps a day. But what happens if you walk 20,000 steps every day for a month?
And speaking of fitness, what’s all the rage this summer? Fitness festivals.
6. Ranking leaders’ videos. After Boris Johnson’s tenure as Britain’s PM became untenable, within days 11 candidates raised their hands to replace him, all with campaign videos at hand. Here are the original top six ranked “from least to most nauseating.” As of mid-week, after multiple rounds of voting, only two of them are still in the running. Who will win the vote of the entire Conservative party membership over the next six weeks? Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak or Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
7. Nutritious eye candy. It’s a weird and wonderful world, still.
8. Legalizing work-from-home. It’s one thing to pass laws limiting how “online all the time” you have to be, as Ontario did last month when it enacted “right to disconnect” legislation. But we have a long way to go before we match the Dutch who have just made working from home a right and not a perk.
9. My father’s bad seats at the opera. Janet Malcolm wrote for The New Yorker from 1963 until her death last year. Last week, it published a posthumous piece about how opera (and all the performing arts) are different from reading books, say, or watching a movie, in that rich people enjoy a different and better experience than others. An interesting take on inequality.
10. Good question: Why can’t we promote public broadcasting like the BBC does?
Forbidden Words: The swath of words forbidden by the “ableist movement”. Like these.
*****
Summer is selling out. Don’t say ‘I’ll book it later’ and
be caught You Know Where.
Join us on the mountains this summer.
We all thought last summer we’d really get out there and do something truly new. We’d really travel again. Treat our family. See just how gob-smackingly beautiful our country is.
Most of us were off by a year, or two. But this year…well, this August we want you to join us on one of the easiest and most exhilarating adventures anywhere – heli-hiking in B.C.
No skill or endurance is required. Just a sense of adventure (which may have been dormant in your heart during COVID) and a desire to smell the wild roses. And just as there are no conditioning or skill requirements, there are no age limits either. You can be, 8, 18 or 81 and be enlivened by the whole thing. You can be a marathon runner or mountain climber. Or you can also be wearing your Medic Alert bracelet the entire trip, as five of us recently did. You can bring your partner, your grandkids, your bestie.
We’ve taken friends heli-hiking for the past few summers and all of them (and I mean all) have come home raving about how gorgeous, different and wonderful it all was. And from door to door, the whole amazing experience is just five summer days.
So yes, Heaven can wait. But can you?
For more information on this and other RamsayTravels adventures, click here. And, please also forward to your like-spirited friends.
