When did they stop making bootstraps part of our daily ritual? I have recently become a devotee of Claude, the AI bot from Anthropic. It tells me, “From what I understand, the literal bootstrap (the tab or loop on boots used to pull them on) has never entirely gone “out of fashion” – they remain functional features on many types of boots today, particularly Western/cowboy boots. If you’re referring to the saying “pull yourself up…
I have, for some inexplicable reason, been buying garden things lately. I go on sprees like this every once in while and this seems to be one of those nervous whiles. I say nervous because today is the day before Election Day and there is a lot going on for me, but at the same time, I’m not going anywhere. Let me explain. I am starting the final set of hearings on a case I…
The tradition of Halloween seems to stem mostly from Celtic sources that celebrated the remembrance of the dead and martyred, specifically those that are cast into the Christian realm of purgatory where those souls who have died in a state of grace are further cleansed before their ascension into heaven. I guess I had always thought of purgatory as a bad and restless place that you went to if you were not worthy, but it…
For some strange reason, one of my obsessions is with the higher hierarchy of the Catholic Church. My mother and father were Catholics. My mother’s family were devout Slovak Catholics who intentionally lived across the street from their parish church on land that my grandfather donated to the church of that purpose. But my mother was a modern (for her time) first generation American who was far more pragmatic about life than any church doctrine…
I will admit to ignoring much of the national press on Sunday. I, like many Americans, feel overwhelmed by the fray of pre-election maneuvering and speculation. Every analytical piece trying to explain the state of the race based on polling and/or intuition brings on a stronger and stronger sense that it’s time to sit back and let the dice fall where they may. That’s a very hard thing to admit for someone as committed as…
This week, both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post, owned respectively by billionaires Patrick Soon-Shiong (a biotech magnate ranked 204 on the Forbes 400 list of billionaires) and Jeff Bezos (Mr. Amazon is #2 on that Forbes 400 list, second only to Elon Musk and probably well above Musk had he not bifurcated his estate and given MacKenzie Scott, his first wife $38 billion in the settlement) shocked the liberal democratic side of the…
“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,…
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…
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…
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…