Steven Parmenius

  Let’s have some frank talk about fighter jets. Canada has a fleet of CF/18’s which are basically the American F/A18A. These aircraft date from the 1980’s (when they were a hot ride) and are reaching the end of their useful existence as wear and tear on their airframes is reaching the point where they will no longer be worth repairing or upgrading. Aircraft are designed with a certain number of flight hours in mind. The more these flight hours are surpassed or extended the more the cost of restoring the airframe to its original condition becomes prohibitive. The assumption of course is that they will, at that point, be replaced by a fleet of new combat jets. Canada is now in the position of needing to do this OR not have combat jets at all (like New Zealand). I am an aviation enthusiast and love airplanes of all sorts. Of all the airplanes there are the fighter jet is certainly the pinnacle so it pains me (ever so slightly) to say it may be time to simply not build anymore and it may

    Christopher Hitchens had no qualms expressing contempt for people and things he disliked so I am sure he would appreciate my candor in saying that, as a man who endorsed Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and defended the genocide of indigenous Americans, I think him a scurvy fellow. I say that as one pugilist to another knowing him to be a man who relished an exchange of insults in the fine British literary tradition. Now that the initial un-pleasantries are out of the way, however, let me give him a spot of credit. Hitchens has a fan base of people who lament him and complain of how the world has gone grey with his untimely passing. This, I suppose, is because he wrote well. I myself would forgive a man a great deal for writing well. I have long ago forgiven Kipling and Claudel, as Auden counselled, and indeed much worse men than they. Someday I may even forgive Hitchens for the sake of his admirable writing on Lord Nelson. Before that reconciliation takes place however, I have one more bon

                                                             As I write and blog on such matters Facebook is constantly sending me recommendations for ‘discussion sites’ on the general subject of Atheism and Theism. Some of these are Christian sites but most of them are not. One thing I have noted about both categories is that they are not, in fact, what they claim to be. By this I mean that they have ZERO to do with discussion. The Christian ones are safe spaces where people will not be laughed at for conspiratorial thinking. The secular ones are safe spaces for people to vent their feelings about their miserable upbringings or compete for likes or laughing emoticons in the never ending quest for the next ‘dunk’ or ‘mic drop’.   One discovers this when one injects a comment that does not conform to the categories or language typical on the site. The result is instant and deeply resentful dismissal. The problem, I have noticed, is one of elitism vs egalitarianism. Without boasting I ca

                     You know the one I mean. The one Amanda Gorman read at Biden’s inauguration and has since parlayed into book deals, fashion shoots and lavish endorsements. This poem is now being translated into Dutch and Portuguese and probably a score languages I have never even heard of. As a son of the shrewd peasantry I object to none of this. Make hay while the sun shines is my motto. Nor do I object to anyone making a living. Is it a good poem though? Not to my ears unless hills are ‘golden limbed’ in a way I can’t quite picture. ‘We are striving to forge a union with purpose/To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man” is the kind clunky sentence I am continually crossing out of student essays. Nor is this use of ‘man’ as a generic pronoun now standard. “Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew/ That even as we hurt, we hoped /That even as we tired, we tried”. This has a nice swing to i

    Most people don’t choose the language they speak. I, if my mother is to be believed, did. Her plan to raise me as a bilingual child foundered on my stubborn insistence on responding to and in English and not French. My tongue spoke only English I said and so that is the language I was raised in. Freudians can speculate on this endlessly I suppose. The fact remains that English is not only my ‘mother tongue’ but also my sandbox and plaything. I am also, to the annoyance of students, a guardian and shepherd of this tongue, a role of which I am deeply unworthy.    Deep down I don’t regret this though my Gaelic and French speaking ancestors may think I have sold out to the oppressors. Perhaps I have but the fact remains that, though it is almost impossible to articulate this sensibly, I made the exact right choice. I am aware, of course, that if I were raised as a Mandarin speaker I might say the same of Mandarin. Though obvious, this objection does not quite sway me. Somewhere in the