A Walk in the Park
A lot of us have taken to the outdoors to maintain some level of pandemic sanity. Here’s a little ode to my go-to sanctuary, fortunately just a few minutes from where I live. The complete photo essay is here.
Not Nonsense
What’s the Big Idea?
There are those right now who are asking us to be bigger people. Us as a country, as a society, to be bigger. To expand, to embrace a bit of discomfort, to open up, breathe deep until it hurts, stand up taller until we feel our spines unfurl, look around longer and harder. At our own communities, at our own neighborhoods, open the locked drawers where we harbor doubt, …
Stop. We’re both wrong.
It’s safe to say then that the more you harbor acrimony toward your political foes, the greater chance that you’re just flat-out…wrong. Here are a few examples: The average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. The fact is only 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well. The average Republican believes that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. The …
Friday
I am looking at my email inbox on one monitor and the cursor last highlighted a robo-generated email from Amazon asking me how I liked my clip-on guitar tuner. I am also looking at the New York Times website front page on the other monitor (I have two monitors because of work) with a few pixels showing at the top of a huge full-width ad for the ShowTime show …
The rise of Il Douché and the untimely death of J.P. Barlow
On the same day Donald Trump aka Dear Leader, Il Douché, announced he wanted to throw a military parade for himself, I happened to become reacquainted with John Perry Barlow’s 25 Principles of Adult Behavior. Barlow was in the news that day due to his untimely death at age 70 and because he was a great visionary, poet and optimist. On the other hand Orange Julius Caeser was all …
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Halos around the moon
I went to the eye doctor recently because, well, I turned 65. Medicare. Time to fix all the things. Tick tock. My ophthalmologist, Dr. P, is a young man in his 30’s who tends to say “Okay then, my friend” as he holds his laptop with one hand like a tray of hors d’oeuvres and shakes mine with the other. If I had to guess, Dr. P is a …
Babysitting Lainey: A story of courage
So Tuesday night was our first babysitting gig with our new granddaughter Lainey who was exactly one month old on Thursday. We’ve had this on the books for quite a while and during that time I’d built up a fair amount of first-time-in-32-years anxiety about it. For Sara, this would be the first time she’s changed a diaper or tried to solve the Chinese puzzle that is a onesie …
Letters to Lainey #1
November 20, 2017 Thank god you’re finally here, Lainey. So much has happened and is happening and is about to happen. There is so much exciting news! First, the politics. Sorry. This is really boring and I hate to start with politics but I have to mention it—we used to have a mean, nasty person for a president but then we found out about you and everyone got together …
When the CBO chickens come home to roost
Maybe the best thing that could happen to American healthcare is the worst thing that could happen to American healthcare—that McConnell’s draconian, cynical, ill-conceived, anything-for-a-win, health care bill passes the Senate, passes again in the House and gets signed into law, with all the “Upton Effect”, smoke and mirrors so-called “improvements”. It’s fine to get all “hair on fire” about the CBO reports, about the prospect of masses of …