Bringing the Troops Home for Christmas Only 90 shopping days until Christmas! I usually treat holidays with a great deal of flexibility. My oldest kids’ mother, a lovely woman for whom I have the utmost of respect and affection, takes Christmas as seriously as she takes anything. This is a woman whose basement storage room shelves are neatly stacked with sealed plastic Container Store bins, properly labeled with each of the holidays (major ones and…
To Be or Not to Be I don’t know whether I want to work anymore. That sounds funny when I read that back. Work is one of those funny words that can mean just about anything. I was not a privileged kid (not that I was “underprivileged” either), so I did my share of manual labor jobs as a kid. Given a childhood interrupted by my mother going to graduate school for four years,…
Trending Towards Change Donald Trump is probably having a better morning today than you think. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that he has been inviting an impeachment inquiry for a long time because it will vindicate him in the Senate and thereby work for his electoral prospects in 2020. You’re thinking that the tactically brilliant Nancy Pelosi has finally been overwhelmed by irrational congressional pressure to punish Trump by sending him through…
Global Tipping Point Allow me to be so bold as to declare that we have just hit a global tipping point of world-changing proportions. How’s that for a sentence to hook readers? Let’s start by agreeing what we are tipping from. The world has gone awry in the past five years and has moved decidedly away from liberal democracy. People around the world had gone to a place of fear for their lifestyles. These…
Resistance Insistence Resistance is a word that is stuck squarely in my mind today. I have a gray t-shirt with the word RESIST across the chest. It is a political statement and it is meant to mean a refusal to accept or comply with something. I like the sentiment in today’s political environment, only I would add an exclamation point at the end for RESIST! It says to me and anyone who encounters me and…
Home Town Heroes Kim and Lennie put on a show last night. One from Indiana and one from Missouri, giving tribute to their home states and all the song writers that came from, lived in or happened through their home states. They also indulged their mutual love for New York City and its vast array of song material, by singing a few of those tunes as well. I would like to take a moment…
Compromising Compromises In almost every corner of modern life there are reasons to compromise rather than stick dogmatically to a strong and extreme position. This issue itself can be a very debatable one and some will say that compromise on the most important issues is unacceptable and morally repugnant. If only the world was always so black and white, life would be a lot less morally conflicted. I remember in high school, I attended…
Born to be Wild Every once in a while I see some sort of special event that catches my fancy. A few weeks ago I stumbled on an online ad for a one-night-only 50th anniversary showing of Easy Rider at Radio City Music Hall. It’s actually 50 years, two months and six days since the first day of release of the movie on July 14th, 1969, Bastille Day. Fifty years is a long time.…
Batter Up A funny thing happened on the way to the office. It turns out that this summer, the world has decided that it likes hydrogen again. That’s an understatement based on the 200-page report issues by the International Energy Agency (IEA). They say hydrogen is once again the darling it was a decade ago and a decade before that. Funny thing is that hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, and…
My Two Cents I just finished watching To Sir with Love with Sidney Poitier on TCM. It’s a great movie, not because of the acting or even the script. It’s a great movie because of the messages of diversity, social awareness, the value of education, and how good teachers can change lives. I wish I could teach young high school kids. I’ve wanted to do that for years, but I’ve never figured out how…