One of my pet peeves is people talking or texting on their mobile phones while driving. Are their conversations so pressing that they can’t wait till it’s safe to chat? Studies show that speaking on the phone can dull your reflexes more than being drunk. Here in Britain talking on a mobile phone while driving is banned but millions still do it. Just a moment ago in my street I saw a woman doing a reverse, uphill parallel park while talking on her phone. And that in an area filled with small children. Today another woman was sentenced to four years in jail for killing a cyclist while driving and texting at the same time. Read more by clicking HERE.
Month: February 2008
Slow Reading
Wow. Last night I finished reading to my children the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. What an odyssey – 3,407 pages in all. We must have started two years ago, and we read other books along the way, but Harry Potter was always there, a fellow traveller on this leg of their journey through childhood. When we started out, my daughter couldn’t read. Last night she was peering over my shoulder trying to see what was going to happen next with Lord Voldemort before I got there. Reading seems to me the ultimate act of slow. At a time when so much reading involves skimming bite-sized chunks, it is a relief and joy to tackle a very long work that repays the investment of time and attention so handsomely. I wouldn’t read Harry Potter to myself but I loved reading it to my kids. I hope the three of us will always remember those long hours spent huddled together on beds, in tents, in airplanes, by the beach, in forests, even in the car while stuck in traffic jams listening to the story unfold, slowly but surely. The question now is what big book to read next. My son is lobbying for the Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings. My daughter thinks there will be more princesses in the Narnia Chronicles. Any suggestions welcome…
Slow homes
It was only a matter of time before someone applied the Slow label to housing. Calgary, the biggest city in my home province of Alberta, is booming at the moment. A forest of cranes looms over the sky-line and the construction industry can’t build homes fast enough to meet demand. But in all the hurry, and with everyone focussed on turning a quick profit, corners are being cut. Much of the new housing is of the one-size-fits-all variety found across North America, complete with large carbon footprint and low-grade materials. Many new neighbourhoods have very little character. But now the fightback has begun. A local architect named John Brown has launched a Slow Homes movement. He wants Calgarians to invest more time and thought in the way their homes are built and their neighbourhoods assembled. He wants to replace the high-turnover, homogenized model of house-building with something that is not only more sustainable and aesthetically pleasing but that also promotes stronger communities. Something slower, in other words. Sounds very sensible and timely to me. To find out more, clickHERE.
Early slow…
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Our culture is obsessed with time – how to use it, how to gain it, how not to waste it. But the roots of that neurosis stretch back long before the invention of management consultants and the BlackBerry. Mankind has been fretting about time for centuries, even if the anxiety deepened with the invention of clocks. A reader has just sent me a glorious excerpt from Rabelais’ Gargantua, which was written in the 16th century. It contains wisdom and advice that ring true today:
“… And because in all other monasteries and nunneries all is composed, limited, and regulated by hours, it was decreed that in this new structure there should be neither clock nor dial, but that according to the opportunities and incident occasions, all their hours should be disposed of; for, said Gargantua, the greatest loss of time that I know, is to count the hours. What good comes of it? Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment and discretion.”
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