Fiction/Humor Memoir

Pink Stuff

in the last few years when we’ve traveled overseas, we’ve gone with our neighbors, Mike and Melisa. We went to Egypt and Jordan with him and we went to Southeast Asia with him early next year. We will go to the far southern reaches of South America with them (this time on a cruise). The common thread of our travel adventures has been that we have gone to reasonably exotic places with the exception of…

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Memoir Politics

End of Days

“IN THE LAST DAYS,’ GOD SAYS, 1 WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT UPON ALL PEOPLE. YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS WILL PROPHESY. YOUR YOUNG MEN WILL SEE VISIONS, AND YOUR OLD MEN WILL DREAM DREAMS. IN THOSE DAYS I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT EVEN ON MY SERVANTS-MEN AND WOMEN ALIKE- AND THEY WILL PROPHESY. – ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 2:17-18 NLT Last night, as we did our usual “What do you want to watch?” dance,…

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Love Politics

SNAP!

Snap is a funny word if you look it up. The first thing you have to get past is the fact that the food stamp program in the United States is called the SNAP program, standing for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That program helps 12.6% of Americans (42 million) get enough to eat. There is evidence that at least another 20 million Americans could be eligible for SNAP, but do not take the benefit. This…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir

Not So Genius

There are many days when I find myself marveling about the world we live in and how much better it is now than when I was young. I find it funny that there are some people around that bemoan the loss of this or that and make a big deal about wanting things to go back to the way they were. I don’t mind a little wistfulness, but let’s face the facts that many of…

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Love Memoir Politics

If Life Isn’t Kicking Your Ass, It’s Not Doing It’s Job

Michael Keaton is one of the actors I always want to watch. He’s never really gone full A-List, but he has hung in there for a long time and keeps doing interesting projects every step of the way. While he earned his chops mostly in the sitcom TV space, I think his breakout film role was probably Bettlejuice, which is very memorable, even though its weird. In fact, I think the only reason it still…

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Politics

Falling Down

Do you remember that Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall movie from 1993 about the unemployed defense industry engineer who is socially awkward and going through a rough patch with a divorce and every other thing that can go wrong in life? He gets stuck in a Freeway traffic jam on a hot day and he has finally just had enough and walks away from his car and starts a mad rampage through Los Angeles where…

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Love Memoir

Rafah Nocturne

I doubt many of us knew where Rafah was a year ago. That is one of the strange silver linings of war. Earlier this year we took a boat ride in Laos on the Mekong River. I knew the name all too well from those newsreels of the Vietnam war from the mid-60s. Someday someone will say, “I’m going sightseeing in the Donbas Region” like they were going to the Lakes District of England. I’m…

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Memoir Politics

A Cult of Grievance

We’ve all seen it happening for eight years now and I think we’ve all been either ignoring it or thinking it’s just a schtick. If you had told anyone in the country that an old crass, bigoted billionaire who cried a victimization river would get a following of 47% of the voting population, we would have laughed at you and told you that your imagination was very weird. Everything we have all been taught over…

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