Trump and MAGA; they aren’t unlike the roadkill skunk decomposing down the block that the animal control boys aren’t getting around to picking up. Festering and funky in the afternoon sun it sits there and cooks, the effluvium is never ending, 24/7/365 – for four rotten years. And there’s no escape. It’s dark on the …
The Fourth of July. Its formal name is Independence Day, and with apologies to all the Christians out there, it should be the most revered of American holidays; more revered than Christmas and Easter. Take it from an agnostic. Traditions keep us grounded and I followed one every Independence Day. Before dawn, I would, with …
“But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it (Hitler’s Mein Kampf) before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one …
“Western fully understood that he owed his existence to Adolf Hitler. That the forces of history which had ushered his troubled life in the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West.” ~ The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy’s fictional character, Bobby Western, and …
The boy turned 13. Thirteen begs a question. Is he still a boy? For a time, back when he was two or three, he would insist that he was a boy. Whenever Cora or I presented him with the proposition that he was a person he responded with a reasoning, “I’m not a person, I’m …
“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall. The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. …
Cora posed the question sometime during Thanksgiving weekend. It was the never before posed query that put normalcy into doubt. “Are we getting a tree this year?” She might just as well have asked if we planned on breathing. I’d actually been asking myself the same question since the holiday season began, sometime back in …
Banner photo. Dad having a cold one. North Africa? Italy? Hey dad. When you were a youth, did you ever wonder what kind of father you might be? You were at loose ends during most of your twenties. Did you even entertain the prospect of fatherhood? You had a lot of time to run those …
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment. Probably the most contentious twenty-seven words in the entire Constitution. I don’t hate The Second Amendment, but I don’t like it either. I don’t own …
The server came to our table, and in the perky manner that must nowadays be a server’s job requirement (“My qualifications are; extensive knowledge of fine dining, friendly, attentive, hard worker and I have a saccharine, perky voice that’s guaranteed to either warm your heart or kill your appetite.”), introduced herself and chirped, “I’ll be …
The Life in My Years 