New Horizons by Max Roy

  What’s On The Telly?   I remember the times when parents worried about the kids watching too much television. It seems like that was long ago in a past century. Things have gotten a lot more complicated since that time. Now it’s all about everybody being on their phone, even when they are walking (or driving, for God’s sake.) Or it’s about gaming! How about AV, living in some otherworldly place when you put on special glasses? What will happen to us when our SMART houses are smarter than we are? The truth is, it’s hard to get through life these days without counting on the proper functioning of some sort of electronic device for us grown-up folks. And often, we need the help of the youngsters just to get us through the day as these devices confound us with their temper tantrums. For myself, I am among the old-fashioned in enjoying the blessings of merely having a dear old television set. Oh yes, I have a computer, and my Bride has an Ipad. And we spend a lot of time ...

  “Brent A Fayeral”A Small Fire Is Burning! I was born in Winnipeg in 1934 at the height of the Depression. For our family, things apparently got worse, and our accommodations mirrored our descent to dependence on welfare and residence beside a junk yard near the railway tracks. In spite of counting our pennies, looking back, what I remember was regular attendance at a synagogue and a Bar Mitzva, with attendant instruction, and regular after-school cheder. And Sabbath was special every week. I learned English as soon as I got out in the street, but the language at home was Yiddish. I could read in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, and I had my share of Sholem Aleichem and Mendel Mocher Sforim, and others. My external world was all in English, but I was aware that I lived in a Jewish village with an ongoing vibrant Jewish culture leavening the life we had in our corner of the Diaspora. There was always a fire of Jewish activism burning in Winnipeg. With the advent of Israel independe...

                         This and That:                Your Key To The Secrets! What will happen next? You have been going along, living your life, doing the things you feel you have to. All of a sudden things seem to be spinning out of control. Your life has been turned into a turmoil of events. Governments are making decisions about what is best for you, what your priorities should be, where you can go, what you should be doing. People are dying of something you can’t see, or taste, or feel, as if the Black Death of the Middle Ages has come back. And this thing is changing from day to day, along with the rules of the road. We are being poked and prodded, have to carry identification as if we are crossing borders just to get into a restaurant. We are hiding our features behind a mask to carry out the ordinaries of our daily lives. People can’t see...

              Telling Me About Myself I am always a little reluctant to write about myself. That is for a number of reasons. I worry that people will think me an egomaniac. Or there may be some secrets that I wish to hug to myself because I may be ashamed of them, or because I don’t want to share them with others because I hate to admit them even to myself; they hurt my self-image. Finally, why should other people even be interested in stuff that has nothing to do with them? We want to know about things we can relate to, that affect our personal needs. So I try to focus on things that I hope my readers may be interested in. But today I was reading a book that was all about the personal doings of the author, and I thought to myself, why don’t I do that? I am probably not at all as interesting as the author who happens to be a film star and famous, but what the heck! I have always wondered why I have so little recollection of my younger years ...

    If You Want To Know Who We Are?* Very much more to the point, do “we” know who we are? Have we figured that out? Born, without our permission, into a family of strangers that we have to get to know, we have not the least idea who we are. Dependent on these strangers for our every need, we have no idea what to expect. If our creature comforts are answered to, we begin to understand that we face goodwill. If not, if our cries for attention go unanswered, we fall silent, accepting that we inhabit a hostile environment. If we survive, those early experiences may color our attitudes toward all our future experiences. Those early experiences may go a long way toward defining who we are, who we can be. So much of what we may become is determined by the crucible in which we are formed. We know our genetic make-up provides us with a package of potentialities. But our upbringing may do so very much in determining which of those potentialities will be realized. That outcome is ve...