President Biden’s comments about the Afghanistan military’s unwillingness to fight is a bit like telling your husband of twenty years, on the eve of presenting him with divorce papers, that you always thought he was a bit dumb. It is not a skillful use of words or thought. Biden’s comments about the Afghani fighting force …
My daughter is fifty-two, old enough to have lived a life, have friends, a career, travel. I am glad for this. I am pleased I had her when the predictions of “global warming,” what climate change was called then, were still mere rattling of yet to be imaged chains. I read the population bomb at …
She was seventy-four years old, bright, quick, well-read, the mother of a friend. Alicia lived in a neighboring town, a small farm town. My friend understood we might have something in common. Alicia is a reader and a student of history. Perhaps by the time we are seventy-four, we are all students of history. Oddly …
“I have got to tell you something,” said Teresa breathlessly. She is often breathless, thought Jessica. It was usually a drama. She listened with only half an ear, scanning her FaceBook feed listlessly. Thank heavens they were not on FaceTime. “You will not believe what happened. You know I finally got the first Pfizer shot …
(attribution unknown for ‘A Squirrel in the Neighborhood’) “We’re flanked, and we’ve lost the line.” This statement is an emergency communique from a Capital policeman on January 6, 2021. What is obvious in the recording of this moment is the fear in the policeman’s voice. He had enough training to understand the danger around him, …
My seventh great grandfather is rumored to be Benedict Arnold. I do not know that this is the truth, but it might explain a lot. I sit here in Mexico, trying to navigate the wifi connection and electricity outages while speaking horrible Spanish. I am understood, but barely. I talked with friends in the United …
Many years ago, I traveled to Mazatlan with two friends. I vividly remember the trip to Mazatlan in the relative luxury of a sleeper car on the train. It was the first time I had taken a sleeper car on a train, and I loved it. Being rocked to sleep by the motion of the …
Mexico Stories, A Little Town in the Mountains and a tiny surprise Read More »
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Victor Frankl It is a sunny day, fall in the mountains, clear, crisp with blue skies. I have just listened to a talk on equanimity, after meditating. …
“…our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.” “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum,” by the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine. If it were not for the Coronavirus, our country …
The sounds of children playing outside have been a constant stream over the last few months. Starting in April, my four little neighbors, ages three to seven, have been playing outside. They are a hearty bunch as the weather in April is still chilly in this area. They also appear to love to scream. Little …