The Life in My Years

An anthology of life

“Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model. Americans, Brits, Spaniards, Australians—everyone—can and should learn from it.” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, The Hungarian Conservative, December 2022. With his engaging kindly smile, the shortish, stocky fellow with his silver/white hair parted down the middle could be any child’s …

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The second of two parts about the Trump Administration’s assault on the First Amendment. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ~ Alexander Butcher, 2016 winner of the Orwell Youth Prize. It’s a mostly innocuous op-ed, but it got flagged as being …

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This is what democracy looks like. I don’t do many outings with my camera anymore. Most of my time has been taken up with America’s current political situation (and I wish i didn’t feel such a duty). My blog, which used to concentrate on photography and travel, and the life in my many years, has …

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On Sunday April 6th, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman turned to X (Twitter) and sounded the alarm after Trump’s so-called “liberation day” liberated Wall Street of $5 trillion dollars (and me of $20,000 dollars). Ackman wrote in part,“ … by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby …

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March 29, 2025.Walnut Creek, California Another Tesla Takedown protest and a much larger crowd. The previous week’s crowd was estimated at 1000. This week’s estimation is 2000. Larger and louder. Never large enough, never loud enough. From grandparents to grandchildren to family dogs, but it’s still not enough. It’s a race against autocracy and autocracy …

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Here in Trumpistan it’s not all bad news. Take the now well publicized amateurish chat group of administration officials discussing a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen, using Signal, a retail messaging app, and accidentally inviting journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor in Chief of The Atlantic, to the party. When I read about this …

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March 22, 2025Walnut Creek CA. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” ~ Desmond Tutu It’s the third straight week …

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March 15. 2025It’s Saturday, noontime. Cora and I walking to the Tesla dealership in Walnut Creek, California. Walnut Creek is a tony little town located at the northern end of the Tri-Valley, but isn’t really considered a part of Tri-Valley. That’s because Tri-Valley is stinking rich and Walnut Creek is only – tony. The long …

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At the end of this short post is a link to another short blog written by Jane Fritz, an American expat, now a Canadian citizen. Her piece and the op-ed included in her piece describe what I feared would happen with the election of Donald Trump The “king” on his throne boasted of “a golden …

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Warning: Graphic and disturbing content. Nick Fuentes posed the word problem on a podcast in 2019. “If I take one hour to cook a batch of cookies and Cookie Monster has fifteen ovens working 24 hours a day for five years, how long does it take Cookie Monster to make six million batches of cookies?” …

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