Being Rude Modern life is all about managing through an 8 billion person world. It can be misleading as we travel around from here to there. Whether in the West or the East, the North or the South, there are great swaths of wide open spaces. I watched a movie the other day called Survive. It was about a woman who is suicidal who survives a plane crash and then has to find her way…
Hot & Cold Water We are in Beacon, New York this Labor Day weekend for my son Tom’s wedding, which will take place on Sunday. He is marrying Jenna, who we have known for ten years, and Kim and I could not be happier about it. Tom and Jenna got engaged two years ago when he proposed to her under the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side of the East River. As we were coming…
The Not-So-Dead Sea Scrolls I enjoy drilling down on articles in the National Geographic, and this week NG is highlighting an article on the Dead Sea Scrolls and what they tell us about the thinking at the time of the life of Jesus Christ, and thus how that thinking impacted the development of early Christianity. This piqued my interest for two reasons. First, my general interest in antiquity and specifically the history of such an…
And the Heat Goes On We all know that summer goes as a season until the Autumnal Equinox, one of the two times in the year when the sun’s path crosses directly over the equator and the length of the day is equal to the length of the night (approximately), which this year happens to fall smack dab in between September 22nd and 23rd. And we know from experience here in the Northern Hemisphere that…
The Pacific Has No Memory The Shawshank Redemption has been the top-rated movie on IMDb ever since it went to video almost thirty years ago. Strangely enough, the movie was not a box office success, and while it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won not a one. It’s heritage was solid, having been based on a story written by Stephen King and adapted by director Frank Darabont, who never again did anything as…
A Blue Super-Moon As a nod to the uniqueness of the moment and as a bonus for my readers (at least those who like my stories), I am sending out a second story today, just like August is sending us a second full moon tonight at 9:30pm. A Blue Moon, as most of you know is when there is a second full moon in a month (a month being, by definition, a lunar cycle). That…
The Big Disconnect The world is spinning off in two different directions at the same time. What I can’t really figure out is whether or not this is what always happens, if it is a short-lived quirk, or if this is a new phenomenon that sets the tone for what we have to live with going forward. We have all heard about and experienced the divisiveness in our society these days. In the extreme, the…
The Dance Card Gets Filled The notion of a dance card started in the Eighteenth Century, but it really came into vogue in Nineteenth Century Vienna. I always thought of it in regard to Gone With The Wind with the young Scarlett O’Hara with a small booklet looped to her wrist where the evening ballroom dances were listed and next to which she could write the names of the many beaus and potential suitors that…
The Cold Cut of Life I know before I write this that I will receive any number of comments and criticism for what I am about to write. This is less because I plan to write something controversial or fundamentally bad, but more because I am playing into both a gender stereotype, and what many of you have always suspected is a personal flaw of mine. I mentioned in passing that the other day I…
The Dark Triad The psychology of leadership is an important issue generally, but it seems especially so today. Leadership in good times is challenging, but leadership in difficult times is imperative. We are in some of the most difficult times the world may ever have seen. I know we are all prone to a degree of hyperbole in thinking that our problems are greater than all others, but the truth is that as cyclical as…