This morning, so called “Black Friday,” the following quote was forwarded to me: “Only in America would people kick and claw the shit out of each other over cheap merchandise only hours after being thankful for what they already have.  We need to add a companion holiday.  Thanksgiving … and Morehaving.  Oh, wait.  That’s Christmas.” […]

Occasionally I read or hear something about which a response leaps to mind. Most of the time I let it pass because my response seems unlikely to be successfully transmitted to the originator of the comment. It occurs to me that I have a platform on which I can comment, and so I think I […]

Occasionally a phrase or song gets stuck in my thoughts and can’t be easily dislodged. A recent conversation with a new acquaintance brought this Paul Simon tune to mind and now it plays on a repeating track in my mind. Let me tell you how this all came about. My new acquaintance, let’s call her […]

Thomas L. Friedman made a comment in his op-ed piece in the New York Times on 9/28/10 to which I had an immediate negative reaction. Then I began to think, (which is a happy result after reading reasonable statements) not only about the statement, but also about my reaction. Friedman concluded his call for a […]

I have recently come to the realization that something which I had been taught to believe without questioning, and to which I had subsequently held without any evidence of its veracity other than what I had been told, should no longer be assumed to be true. And I am now amazed that an intelligent person […]

Over the past few months my thoughts on a number of issues have fluctuated and been influenced by events and information. I’ve decided to put down my thoughts to clarify them for myself and to provide a springboard for discussion, should any thoughtful, reasonable person wish to engage with me. I think it would be […]

Periodically I am tempted to believe that sanity has a chance on this planet, and then I come across a conversation like this one among “friends” on Facebook. Person 1: “DC Sniper will finally Die.. What a shame the families of the victims arent able to execute him the way THEY see fit” Person 2: […]

I think that the eternal dichotomy of life is best exemplified in parenting. Juxtaposed in time are, on one hand, the joys of watching the accomplishments of your children which might in some small way reflect knowledge and behaviors that you exemplified and taught, and on the other hand, the painful realization that, as they […]

What a morass has been made of Gaza. The Israeli invasion seems clearly designed to demoralize the residents of Gaza. How else could you explain the complete razing of a town because a few Hamas fighters used one or two houses for firing at the Israelis. This seems so wrong-headed to me. Removing all vestiges […]

I still haven’t totally come to terms with what I intend in this blog. My tendency is to write only when I can say something I think others will be impressed with, which rarely occurs. Even then, I seem to need it to be concise and well thought out. Again, that means that it just […]