She’s a sweet old dog. It’s taken most all of the eight years since we brought her home to stop being a puppy. She still gets excited when the doorbell rings but life has changed. No longer do I have to call her to know...
My mother is in a nursing home near to us. It is convenient to drop in for a few minutes more than once a day. Recently she is having trouble remembering things and this can be very specifically correlated to a certain medication. The medicine...
This morning during a television interview, Ian McKellen, who portrays Gandalf in the film trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien, said, and I cannot remember the exact context because the sentence leaped upon me, “Sometimes a fool’s wisdom is the...
My granddaughters spent the afternoon making gingerbread houses. Our table was immersed in Graham crackers, pretzel sticks, Gummy Savers, marshmallows, multi-colored Sprinkles and lots of frosting for glue. But where I asked was the gingerbread? What a stupid question. Gingerbread houses are not about gingerbread. ...
The day before the grandchildren arrive is always grocery-shopping day. I enjoy the cereal aisle. It’s the fun one. There are so many different kinds from which to choose. I don’t have a clue about most of them, so I usually go with Fruit Loops. ...
I found a very nice eight-foot stepladder in the middle of my street. It had obviously fallen off someone’s truck but there was no truck or car in sight. That evening I called everyone on my street who owned a truck seeking its owner but...
Myrtle was a community novelty. Her odd ways did not place her on top of community invitation lists for weddings and social events. Yet she somehow knew when events were occurring and would show up in her very plain dress and with a brown bag...
In July of 2003 a Viennese team of nine surgeons led by Rolf Ewers replaced a diseased tongue with a tongue from a brain-dead donor. The recipient can talk and eat but has no sense of taste. It would be fun to think the man...
Two separate teams of astronomers, one in Virginia and one in France, have recently discovered our galaxy is gobbling up a neighboring galaxy. Every 750 million years, the oval orbit of our neighbor brings it close enough for our gravitation to capture some suns. I...
The Art of War written by Sun-Tzu is the oldest military treatise in the world. It doesn’t matter that it was written 2000 years ago. His ideas are classic and very much worth the study of any general who wishes to win a war. He...