100 Seconds to Midnight

"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There are two ways in which I use Instagram - one is to post a photograph which appears on my page until I take it down, the other is to add to 'my story' and the post will appear for a day - but requires more effort to both see it and 'like' it.  So, when my 'Blue Skies - Happy Earth Day' story on Wednesday draws little attention and no comments I am unsure as to whether it just wasn't that noteworthy, or if in some way I have made an error of judgement and that a 'Happy Earth Day' is the very last thing the world was having on Wednesday and that somehow my enjoyment of it has instantly rendered me less empathic. Looking for evidence to the contrary, I took the book 'Braving the Wilderness' by Brené Brown down off the shelf and discovered that for the second week in a row I, (and now you) have inadvertently stumbled into the realm of Carl Ju...

This is not a time for pessimism.  This is a time for optimism.  This is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action.  But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.    Donald Trump speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2020 President Trump I do not agree that we should dismiss expert opinion nor should we use inflammatory language in doing so, but on the time for optimism and action you might have a point. Optimism on the day we leave the EU, you're joking right?!! Err, actually no, I'm not. This week I listened to 'What happened when Trump removed the experts?' on the BBC Radio 4 podcast 'Beyond Today'.  In this episode author Micheal Lewis talks about how Trump and Boris Johnson are tapping into anger for their political gain, and that, in his view, one of the most important issues facing us is how we control our emotional respon...