I sometimes wish life was as easy to sort out as it is in the old-time westerns when the good guys wore white hats. I very much doubt there is much of a market for white hats. Good historians, those dedicated to seeing through our...
When I was a very little boy, before we moved to the country, we lived in a city row house with just enough room between the house beside us to accommodate a walkway and a small patch of ground. The patch had no grass. It...
If you are like me most of the disputes in which we are involved occur because of misunderstandings. Sometimes we mistakenly misspeak and before we have an opportunity to rectify it, it has been taken negatively by another and we are off to the races. ...
In 1940 Woody Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing “God Bless America”, so he wrote “This Land Is Your Land.” He recorded it four years later. It has become one of our more famous folk songs. But, other than Mr. Guthrie, who said...
While taking our lab for a snuff tonight, (our old dog went for a sniff, this dog snuffs – really, you should hear her) we were looking at Arcturus and wondered what the beings on its planets call it. We call our giant ball of...
One of the great wonders of the human mind is the ability to create the world it wants. We see the things that support our worldview and are blind to the things that do not. If we see the world as a hostile place our...
If you want to feel good about being a human being, don't read the news today. It features such items as elephants being abused at a very famous circus, a video revealing a woman who died on the floor of a hospital while employees did...
Recently I admitted that for all these years I did not know one is not supposed to congratulate a bride for getting married. Today someone who read my confession accused me of being uncouth. Wow. I don't want to be uncouth. I want to be...
While I cannot remember a specific occasion I most likely have committed a social indiscretion through the years. Only today did I learn that one is never to congratulate a bride. Only the groom is to be congratulated. To congratulate is to express joy over...
For an entire week we have had a tiger swallowtail butterfly filling our yard with glorious beauty. He reels among the blooming rhododendrons and azaleas. We have been granted the pleasure of most of its life for it only takes a month from egg to...