Ukraine: the final showdown for sovereignty?

Trading cards should be made of card

Above: One of many trading cards collections that I collected myself, from Brooke Bond tea.

I’m not sure whether the trading in trading cards comes from the fact that the cards are acquired in the course of trade—buying a given product—or from the fact that, if you have too many of one kind, you can trade them with someone who has too many of another kind. In the former sense, a trading card betokens a beguilement, to foster the sale of one company’s products over those of another, regardless of quality. In the latter sense, and on the face of things, the practice of swapping excess duplicates for wanted collection-fillers would seem to promote a sense of mutual satisfaction and equality. But what if you are the card?

No one, of course, can be a trading card. But Greenland can. There are days, I will admit, that my immunity to the gob-smackingly mind-boggling newspaper headlines weakens, and I am left truly open-mouthed, gaping searching for words to express the dumbfoundedness (if such can even be expressed) inculcated by the headlines one encounters. The day the stories that greeted my enquiring gaze were the New Orleans crowd-rammer, the Las Vegas Cybertruck exploder and the airliner crashing into a brick wall was such a day of Are they having me on?