Citius - Altius - Fortius

The games of the XXXI Olympiad, informally called Rio 2016 (and way less informally a list of unkind names longer than my arm) get underway this Friday and they start just in the nick of time as far as I am concerned.

Admittedly, not everyone around the globe is knee (and half way to our butts) deep in a Presidential election unlike any I have endured in my sixty-four years clinging to the surface of our Big Blue Marble as it hurtles through the void, although huge portions of the world's population have a betting interest and more in the outcome.

For the most part, many across our globe have their own trials, troubles, and tribulations to muddle through and so the Olympic Games of the modern era like those of ancient Greece serve as a respite and a much-needed pause in an ever accelerating and escalating pace of life that can and often does do grievous harm to each of us as we pass through.

When the Games conclude and competitors from every nation have returned home (or to their pharmacists; a little joke at Russia's expense), no worries: the horrors we hoped to ignore will still be with us if they haven't managed to kill a few more of us in the interim.

The evil and malevolent crazies and crackpots who murder for mammon or mullahs or any and all in between will be waiting if not patiently than with what the half-wits think is fervor and devotion in support of their diseased ideas of why we are alive.

So "Faster-Higher-Stronger" instead of whatever slogan the sponsors of the televised coverage want you to believe. And cheer for those who compete, and not so much for the flag on their uniforms but for the ideals and dreams their participation celebrates.
-bill kenny