Showing 1 - 10 of 12
How honest are you?
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 16/08/2019
» Those finding a wallet or purse, particularly when stuffed with money or gems, have their honesty sorely tested when the owner's ID is included. Ought they notify him or her? They need the valuables themselves. Was it just luck? Didn't God mean for them to have it? Likely as not the loser is rich and shrugged it off to experience. Or not.
What if?
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/07/2019
» A cine buff -- contemporary, silent, foreign -- since my childhood in the Big Apple, still with a good but not photographic memory, I recall a French movie about a wealthy widow who decided to satisfy her curiosity by looking up her old boyfriends. She wondered what would her life have been like had she married one of them.
Nothing to laugh about
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 07/07/2017
» Certain terms put me off: "only" as in I only want; "just" as in I just mean; "fun" as in let's have some; "hilarious" as in this book is. They are simply untrue.
Here comes the judge
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 07/04/2017
» Ours isn't a very bad world, nor is it a very good one. We are born selfish, which isn't wrong in itself. What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours is only fair. However, what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine isn't. How do we protect ourselves when he proceeds to take what is ours?
Two wives, one husband
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/03/2017
» For multi-millennia, marriage has been about possession. Hands of he/she belong to me. To be sure, in most societies the husband got the best of it as the wife's belongings became his. Why else wed? Well-to-do widows, with both her and her late spouse's goods in her hands, were the prize catch.
Scandinavian myth
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/02/2017
» However much we desire to live in peace, when our nations' leaders beat the drums of war we are obliged to exchange our sickles for guns and march off to combat evil (our side of course good). Through training and luck we return victorious from the fray, perhaps without a leg but with a medal to compensate for it.
The Chinese spy
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 10/02/2017
» If the majority of cloak and dagger scriveners are to be believed, look no further than the CIA for enemy spies (or MI6 as the case may be). In their espionage thrillers, both top secret intelligence agencies are infested with foreign moles and domestic traitors, often in high positions.
Loving non-humans
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/04/2016
» The close relationship between humans and lower forms of animals was noted millennia before Charles Darwin found a primordial connection. The relationship broadened in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book.
A new practice
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 07/03/2016
» The first lesson every recruit learns is keep your head down and never volunteer. There are 22 ranks above yours and all give you orders. They don't want to hear a word out of you, except "Yes, sergeant" or "Yes, sir". It's been like this since ancient times. Don't even think. It is not what you are in the army for.
Crime and culture
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 04/01/2016
» As a New Yorker, my friends and neighbours sent me off to Asia, via Japan, to do my duty in the Korean "Police action". The continent got into my blood and I resolved to head back after receiving my honourable discharge from the military, which I did as a backpacker six years later.