Generational Warfare I first became aware of the Middle East tensions in 1968. I was on an Italian Line ocean liner heading to Rome to live, and the ship was packed with Americans returning to the region after their summer home leaves or whatnot. The region I refer to was entirety of the Mediterranean area and most of the Middle East and North Africa. Remember that in 1968 the U.S. burgeoning multinational corporations were heavily…
The Big Lie You have to hand it to Donald Trump, he has a habit of always aspiring to be at the top of whatever hill he chooses to climb. Of course, the more accurate way to characterize that would be to say that he always aspires to declare that he is at the top of whatever hill he chooses to say he has climbed. I’m sure the subtlety of what I’m differentiating there is…
Betty Girl In the past three years I have written 10 stories with the name Betty in them and yes, they have all been about our little white senior rescue pup who we got in 2020 from a place called Frosted Faces. I suspect, unfortunately, that this may be the last story I write about Betty. Betty seems to be in her end game today. She has not been eating her food, or most of…
Life As Imperfection I go down my share of rabbit holes while I empty my online inbox every morning. I am always on a kick to unclutter that inbox by unsubscribing from various emails and spam, but for one reason or another, like for most people, miscellaneous emails still find their way into or back into the inbox. If I am not in any particular rush at that moment or on that morning (like today,…
The Majesty of Place There is a line from America the Beautiful that we all know that goes “For purple mountains majesties…”. We all know the song written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 (originally called Pikes Peak). She was an English professor at Wellesley College and she wrote the song while taking a cross-country trip to Colorado. When she looked out at the wonders she could see from Pikes Peak, the words flowed into…
From Heather Cox Richardson‘s Letters From an American Turns out I’m more omniscient than I thought…………… In a Washington Post op-ed today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered House Republicans a “path to a better place” than the “dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House.” Democrats have repeatedly offered both in public and in private to enter into a bipartisan governing coalition, he wrote, but under former House speaker Kevin McCarthy…
Babies, Puppies & Vets There’s an old saying in politics that the things you never screw around with in a negative way are babies, puppies and vets. What’s that about? Those are things everyone…everyone… is sympathetic to, so you simply do not fuck with them, or if you do, you make damn sure no one else knows about it. Who doesn’t like babies? They’re innocent and helpless. Politicians make a point about kissing babies for…
Crossover The recent chaos in the House of Representatives over Kevin McCarthy’s speakership has made many of us ask the obvious question of what’s next. My friend Gary and I seem to be two of the only people that I know that have the stomach for discussing such things. Whenever I bring up politics these days, I mostly see peoples’ eyes rolling, and the firm expression on their faces implying that they wish I would…
Backsliding In 2020 I spent most of the year during the early stages of COVID working almost every day around the hilltop with Handy Brad, fixing up everything and anything that seemed either amiss or not exactly as I wanted it. Handy Brad and I got quite close over the course of that year. He is a salt of the earth guy who is like many of the working class Americans that inhabit the majority…