Here I am, starting over again at a new site, using it first of all as an introduction to my books about the rebellion of 1836, in Lower Canada, but hoping also that it can act as a family site for our extended clan, and a general sharing of ideas.
I am therefore putting in links to the James Luther Lakehouse for its members, to Patti’s family tree, and to whatever else is suggested to me .
At this point in our history I believe I am the Oldest Living Member, back living here in a new place, next to the world I grew up in, and symbolically, in the francophone town next to the anglophone town that I was more connected to growing up.
That was a long time ago, as I’m heading for my 91st birthday this May. When you’re about to be 91 you don’t assume you’ll have a lot of time left to write even though you may feel you’ve quite a lot to express. The third section of the site is for views and articles. I do have opinions that are not the usual ones I hear and read and I’m looking forward to expressing them here since I’m no longer in a position to speak up and be heard in public.
And here we are, in interesting times, with the COVID-19 virus in full swing! We are feeling more like One World as all around the globe we are being struck by the same plague. I’ve long been an admirer of Marx, not so much for his predictions for the future but particularly for his position that the economic structure of the society brings about the changing social structures that are evolving within it. Once we emerge from the scourge which is rapidly punishing the whole world, what direction will we take? What will we have learned?
I am fascinated by the speed with which the present is evolving into the future. It is more than 10 years since I read “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, and was tipped into the recognition of change. His book is the one I recommend still to people waking up to the momentum of change we are spinning in.
The ironic aspect of this rapid change is that the parts that are the most resistant to change are the human parts: governance, social structures, and education. Computers, artificial intelligence, new energy sources, medical breakthroughs, climate change are all shaking up our world as we cling to the past. But surely, when the blight striking us finally eases up, we will recognize that we have all just lived through the same nightmare.
I hope that one major consequence of this scourge will be the recognition of a universal need for world governance of the areas of inter-relations among us, international policing instead of armaments, a strengthening of trade rules, a properly representative United Nations.
The parts I plan to look at, those I have the most knowledge of, are the ways we educate our young and the way as individual nations we govern ourselves. In the bit of time that I have left, I hope to contribute to the internationalization that surely must be coming.