Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ll admit I have a bias.  I was raised to be independent; I didn’t have a choice about relying on myself.  Our family had a lower-middle-class life:  no frills, but a decent roof over our heads and food on the table that Mom invariably made from scratch.  It was never kept a secret from myContinue reading “Coping and Critical Thinking”

In every horror or sci-fi or large-scale adventure flick, there’s always someone who dashes through the door or flings himself into the fray before anyone else, frequently shouting something along the lines of, “I’m not afraid,” or, “Don’t worry, I’ll be OK,” or, in the words of many a Darwin Award winner, “Watch this!”  TheContinue reading “I Want to Be the Star”

It’s at least a week’s worth of news cycles ago that word came out about unemployment benefits and people’s return to work.  Turns out that, while Congress was reluctantly pushed into extending and enlarging unemployment coverage, there were strings attached.  Those being that employees who were recalled to jobs had no choice but to goContinue reading “And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’”

To paraphrase Mary Magdalene’s soul searching in Jesus Christ Superstar, “I never thought we’d come to this/What’s it all about?” For decades, there have been divisions in this country about who deserves a social safety net, how much pollution is too much, whether trickle-down economics works, how to maximize educational opportunities, and such esoteric issuesContinue reading “How Did We Get Here?”

Last week, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “One day this peak [in early April] will look relatively small compared to the activity we will see coming down the pike. That’s inevitable.”  He was speaking of overall conditions in the country, andContinue reading “The Cost of Doing Business”

My next-door neighbor has an unusual house; around here, it’s known as, “the Castle.”  Even though it’s at the end of our quiet side street, people constantly drive down, stop, and gawk at the house and yard.  The dwelling looks like a miniature Tudor castle, complete with battlements, a parapet across the top, a roundContinue reading “American Exceptionalism”

The other shoe has dropped.  In my last post, I was wondering why Governor DeWine would remove the lockdown so soon.  It didn’t make sense, given his initial cautious policies.  Now I get it.  The lockdown is still in place until May 29th.  Theoretically, that is.  However, businesses are still slated to re-open on MayContinue reading “Safe or Sorry?, Part II, or 1984 Redux”

I understand the frustration.  We basically missed the whole pre-Easter season, not to mention the home opener, and now we’re losing spring.  We fantasize about our favorite restaurants, and remember what it was like to be able to sit in a crowded theater.  We don’t want to be isolated any longer.  Those who are strugglingContinue reading “Safe or Sorry?”

I attended a New Age presentation in my early days in Cleveland, given by a man I greatly respected as a metaphysicist, or as a friend would say, a practitioner of mystical fu-fu.  The presenter, whose unlikely name was Buz, said that we had indeed entered the Age of Aquarius, but we were at theContinue reading “Darkness and the Dawn”

Several decades ago, when I worked in food and beverage service, we used a phrase about some customers:  “the sincere thank you.”  That described people who would tell us that our service was great and that they’d had a nice meal, and then would leave little or nothing in the way of a gratuity.  Evidently,Continue reading “Thanks. Really.”