On Thursdays I collect the two youngest grandchildren from school and we catch a bus to my house where their mother joins us and we all have scrambled eggs before she gives her father a lift to chess club with his various bits of equipment - computer, data-projector, seemingly everything but the kitchen sink. It’s become a family tradition.
Yesterday Granddaughters Number One and Number Two joined us after they finished work and it turned into yet another big, friendly family meal. Over the summer months, with longer evenings, when this has happened we have gone for an evening stroll together when my daughter returns after taking Phil to chess club. It’s going dark earlier now so instead we spent time last night watching bats flitting about in the garden - the sun sets earlier but yesterday evening was surprisingly mild.
We are fortunate to be able to do such family things together.
Here’s a photo that tells a different sort of story: families forced to flee from Gaza City to what is surprisingly labelled a ‘humanitarian’ zone!
And here are some facts culled from newspaper reports:
- More than a quarter of a million people have been displaced from Gaza City in the last month, according to figures from the UN, with tens of thousands more forced to flee makeshift homes and shelters daily in the face of a new Israeli offensive.
- More than 140 world leaders will arrive in New York next week for the annual United Nations general assembly summit, which will be dominated this year by the future of the Palestinians and Gaza. One world leader who will miss the gathering is Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian president who Washington denied US visas to attend, along with his officials.
- The US once again has vetoed a UN security council resolution that had demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. It also expressed alarm about a recent famine report and Israel’s expanding offensive in Gaza City. The 14 other members of the United Nations’ most powerful body voted in favor of the resolution Thursday
Marwan Makhoul is a Palestinian poet, born in 1979 in the village of al-Boquai’a, Upper Galilee, to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He works in engineering as a managing director of a construction company. He has several published works in poetry, prose and drama. Here is one of his poems:
“In order for me to write poetry
That isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
And in order to hear the birds
The warplanes need to be silent”
I keep coming across examples of Palestinian artwork, amazingly bright and colourful, like this one:
Meanwhile, I’ve also been reading about neo-Nazi ‘fight clubs’ popping up all over the world. They are described as ‘a loose collective of neo-Nazi mixed martial arts groups that gather at local gyms and parks to train, tapping into existing gangs of white nationalists or adjacent organisations.’ Apparently ‘global authorities view them as perhaps one of the most organized and pernicious domestic terrorism threats, emanating from far-right political ideologies.’ And it seems they are using the death of Charlie Kirk as a kind of rallying call for recruitment to such clubs. Scary stuff.
Perhaps the fact that there is an organisation called the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism says it all about how sad and serious things have become. How is it that in the 21st century we need such an organisation? However, here is something a friend sent me:
In contrast, I want to finish on a lighter note. We’re at that time of year when trains can be delayed by leaves on the line. Our railway network stretches for 20,000 miles and has to cope with about 500 billion leaves each year. Who counts them? I wonder. There are special leaf-removal trains. The latest addition to that fleet has been named, following a public vote, “Ctrl Alt Deleaf”. Other shortlisted suggestions were “Leaf-Fall Weapon”, “Pulp Friction” and “The Autumn Avenger”.
Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!
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