Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MARCH 30, 2024 – We’re a big, complex country; 330 million souls, an annual GDP of $26 trillion; billions of transactions and interactions each day that sustain our health, creature comforts, and better ways of life to which we’re accustomed. “Government,” as it were, plays a critical role in how we’ve organized ourselves. It legislates, …
DECEMBER 17, 2023 – I see a close parallel between certain team sports and the infinite spectrum of world problems. If the analogy doesn’t provide solutions, at least it allows reconciliation of chronic frustration against persistent reality. I start, though, with a team sport that’s not parallel to battling issues of civilization: basketball. Played at …
DECEMBER 12, 2023 – Like many of my readers—“left,” “right,” or “center” or all three at once but among a swath of issues—my hair’s set on fire every time I stick my head above the trench and into the trajectories of bombs and bullets of “Breaking News.” In some cases—most notably, Ukraine, Gaza, and gun …
DECEMBER 7, 2023 – Late last night after a pleasant day filled with numerous wonders, I watched 20 minutes worth of the fourth Republican Presidential Debate (so called). DeSantis and Ramaswamy managed to set my hair on fire, while two or three times Chris Christie made me cheer out loud when calling out his colleagues …
DECEMBER 5, 2023 – Yesterday evening after scoring a sugar high from “doughnut-making” time with Grandma, our eight-year-old granddaughter was packed off for home. As Grandma herself then realized that her “supper” had featured . . . doughnuts with icing colored (by our granddaughter) in imitation of automotive fluid and over-adorned with “sprinkles.” If I …
MAY 27, 2023 – Recently, while I was hiking the hills of “Little Switzerland,” a golfer in his late 20s called out a greeting to me as he strode from his cart to the tee. An extrovert, he prompted me to respond similarly. I reciprocated and added a passing observation about the late-day improvement in …
MAY 17, 2023 – Apart from chronic environmental issues bearing down on the entire planet, the most acute potential crisis facing the world right now is the effect of Congressional failure to raise (or better yet, abolish) the artificial cap on U.S. Government debt. This is one of the dumbest of all wholly avoidable, self-inflicted …
MAY 10, 2023 – When you attend a major league baseball game, you expect to see accomplished baseball players pitching, hitting, running and fielding. You’d howl if the players missed every other catch and throw; or if a football team took to the field, played football and called it baseball. Likewise, you wouldn’t want your …
APRIL 12, 2023 – Today the Shelby County (think Memphis, TN) Commission unanimously reappointed Justin Pearson to the state house of representatives. Few people outside Shelby County had heard of Mr. Pearson before the 28-year-old Black man, along with another young Black man and fellow representative, Justin Jones, had been expelled from the legislative body. …
MARCH 31, 2023 – Today, Lindsey Graham called the indictment of Duly Defeated “the most irresponsible act by a prosecutor in the history of the country.” Currently, 9,832 people serve as prosecutors in the United States, which has been formally constituted for 234 years. Against the backdrop of those numbers, “most irresponsible . . . …
MARCH 29, 2023 – Those of us who are repulsed by the Duly Defeated are quick to draw a direct connection between FoxProp’s viewership and Defeated’s political success within the Republican Party. I know (and respect) a number of people who are dedicated members of that viewership. I’m also well acquainted with their blanket rejection …
MARCH 25, 2023 – If you turn check the news these days—or any days—you’ll either investigate Canadian citizenship or follow my example and take matters into your own hands, as in . . . I’m going to be arrested on Tuesday. There, I’ve put it out there. (You can too.) The phone lines and website …
MARCH 22, 2023 – During my years working inside a large financial institution, we were subjected to a regular onslaught of new and improved terms that people slung around mostly to gain acceptance among other people doing likewise. When I encountered the latest lingo in management meetings I wanted to stand up and scream, “Can’t …
MARCH 21, 2023 – When the Duly Defeated came to Minneapolis for a rally in October 2018, the best parts of the show were the clever protest signs among the thousands of demonstrators in the street outside the rally. My favorite: “WHERE DO I START?” At around the same time, I encountered a well-educated, well-heeled …
MARCH 12, 2023 – Sorry, back to the dismal science, because truthfully, I’m fascinated by dismal science and . . . of all the immediate and intermediate things for us good people to worry about, the economy ought to be front and center. If a light breeze now carries our excursion vessel—full lunch buffet included—around …
MARCH 10, 2023 – Today brought unsettling economic news, including the gathering storm clouds around “X Date”—the date when absent legislation increasing the debt ceiling, the federal government runs out of dough to pay its obligations as they come due. By consensus among economists of all stripes, the consequences of Congress not raising the federal …
MARCH 6, 2023 – (Cont.) It was known as the “McCauley Mansion,” built by a member of the McCauley clan, who’d made tidy money during the early days of the lumbering town. But all had gone to wreck and ruin by the time Harriet McCauley, inheritor of the home, had reached her 50s. By 1960, …
MARCH 3, 2023 – The latest news—except on FoxNews—is that Fox isn’t even pretending to be news. Correction: this isn’t news. Further correction: by an old-fashion definition of journalism, not much else that appears on cable news is . . . well, news reporting, as opposed to opinion. But a large distinction separates opinion channels …
FEBRUARY 22, 2023 – Today, as any school kid of my generation could tell the teacher, is George Washington’s birthday. It wasn’t a hard thing to forget when in the first few years of grade school, February 22 featured some prominent reminder: cherry cupcakes for lunch; a story reading by the teacher; an art project …
FEBRUARY 18, 2023 – My mood took a hit today when I discovered that iced-over “Little Switzerland” remains a big fail for skiing. My attitude plunged further after I examined a Venn Diagram of three news items. The first was a one-year review of Putin’s War—a brutal, pointless outrage spawned by a dictator’s megalomania and …
JANUARY 21, 2021 – Recently, a college friend with academic credentials deeper than the seven layers of Troy uncovered a volunteer opportunity with the National Archives Citizen Archivist Project. The task involves transcribing old documents. As a PhD anthropological archeologist, he’s eminently qualified. In his email about it he wrote, “Transcribing some of these records …
JANUARY 16, 2023 – Of all our national shortcomings, the legacy of our Original Sin remains the most persistent contradiction of our basic stated operating principles; a contradiction with real, hard, extensive, corrosive consequences for all of us. The sine qua non of redemption is acknowledgment, yet many Americans still actively resist hearing, reading or …
DECEMBER 7, 2022 – Today in 1941 is the “day [that] will live in infamy,” so said President Roosevelt—the second Roosevelt, but I’ll come back to that later—in his speech to a joint session of Congress the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “In infamy,” as it turns out, doesn’t mean “in eternity.” …
DECEMBER 4, 2022 – Surely you’re acquainted with the right-wing “America First Party” with the motto, “Fighting for Faith, Freedom and the Constitution to Put America First.” Likewise, you’ve heard of Holocaust-denier, Nick Fuentes, Trump’s recent lunch guest and instigator of the annual America First Political Action Conference (“AFPAC”). But how many people who encounter …
NOVEMBER 8, 2022 – Today was a blustery fall day at the Red Cabin. A strong blow out of the southeast whipped the lake into a frenzy and made trees sway without relief. Until João and Joana called from Lisbon late in the morning, I could’ve forgotten it was Election Day (I’d voted early)—our Portuguese …