Unifying (June)

The Greatest died this June. If you, like me, grew up uninfluenced by boxing culture, you still had to figure out the man who had been Cassius Clay, and his poetry. He did something very unusual with the ego. Quote: “Asked by the 1975 graduating class at Harvard University, where he delivered the occasional address, to recite a poem, he said, "Me? Whee". Like many of the stories that surround Ali, the shortest poem in the English language took flights of meaning, with some claiming he did not say "whee" but "we" to demonstrate the unity of the human race.”

Categorising (June)

Is 'No Religion' a category? Can someone seriously be either religious or not religious? What does it even mean, ‘No Religion’?  ‘No Religion’ is a box in the coming census, but what’s it mean and how’s it interpreted? If someone thinks they’re an atheist in June, two months before the census, then becomes a Christian in September, what were they on the day of the August census? Is it the same as saying you don’t subscribe to a denomination? If religion is a reasonable definition of being human, then is ‘No Religion’ possible, or even feasible? It's a meaningless category.

Housing (June)

In ‘We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy’ the homeless are children, sleeping in alleyways and under Brooklyn Bridge, their only protection from the elements being newspaper property pages of real estate tycoons. Maurice Sendak merges two nursery rhymes to tell a story of kittens and a “poor little kid” stolen off the street by rats, that then play cards with magnanimous Jack and Guy for their release. Reading this story from 1993 again in June 2016 details magnify in meaning. ‘Lost! Tricked. Trumped. Dumped!’ is the cry as the victims are carted off to an orphanage.