So let me be clear this is not just a miserable old man spitting into the wind about ‘this modern world’. This is a 74 year old man observing that for all of our extraordinary capacity to communicate we are running the risk of losing our ability to communicate. We have allowed machines to replace our ability to communicate and we have allowed the makers of these machines to persuade us that they are better at communicating than we are. It is brilliant marketing but it rings hollow.

So here’s my thesis. I think old men are undervalued and unseen for the most part. So for the past few years I have been watching old men, observing them in their natural habitat. That became all that much easier the moment I became an old man myself.

This morning when I got up I made a sound. No not that sound. That sound squeezes from all of us no matter the age, from an early age. No this sound is more like an ‘Ooooph’. It started a few years ago, I’d say around sixty-five.

I have to say though that watching the unfolding campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris has triggered memories of a time when I tried politics. It was 1967 and I ran for Student Council at the University of Victoria.

I hope you’ll accept this rather weak, shallow and opportunistic explanation for this week’s blog. You see my wife Mac and I have been moving into our new townhouse. Is there a more loathsome task? That is a rhetorical question and in case you’re not good with rhetoric, the answer is NO! I should acknowledge lest you think I am just a miserable old man …

As I write America may be on the verge of the most impactful social, cultural and political change in a century. Vice President Kamala Harris may be elected as the 47th President. It is change long since past due. There will be pain and disruption of course, there is too much at stake for power to be handed over easily.

“My mistress, the Countess Bubna-Litic does not dither around the question. She has had a dream for some time now to build a magnificent destination resort hotel on the shores of Lake Okanagan. She has picked out the land and now she wants to build her hotel and that is what she wants to talk to you about.”