I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with a very diverse group of people today. It did my heart good. After having spent twenty-five years in and around San Francisco, my return to Kansas meant a lot of things, and one of them was diversity withdrawal. To make matters worse, I started my Kansas return in Johnson County, the … Continue reading
Sometimes you just have to wonder about things. For example, how did a Dutch-Irish lad from Nebraska get to the point where his favorite food group was Asian noodle dishes? Things like Phad Thai, Singapore Chow Mei Fun, and the Drunken Noodles at Zen Zero here in Lawrence. You would think that I would have followed in the tradition of … Continue reading
Why do conservatives hate Nancy Pelosi? I asked myself that question and had no trouble at all in coming up with an answer. She is a self-assured, outspoken, powerful woman who has great success playing a man’s game. Therefore, she is threatening to conservatives in ways that they cannot even begin to comprehend. It is exactly the same reason that … Continue reading
Headlines can be so amusing. These are not headlines intended for humor. Far From it! These are all taken from the CNN main list of the day’s news. Some are not really news at all, some are poorly worded (to say the least), and some are just plain stupid. I keep a text file on my desktop so that I can document … Continue reading
What do you call a morning where you drop the soap in the shower twice, discover that all eight dishes from the leftovers warmed up the night before have been washed in the dishwasher, drop three of the first five ice cubes you try to put in your carafe of water to carry downstairs, find that the fan in your … Continue reading
America is suffering from an overdose of magic, and much of the world is following along. It will surprise no one if I say that I have a theory about that. My theory is: Americans are becoming escapists in droves because there are so many things about reality that they cannot deal with. It is easier to slip away into … Continue reading
The past often haunts both people and countries. Turkey’s past is haunting them now, that sad past with Armenia, in which Turkey did not act ethically. If they were trying to come to grips with their own past, it might be a good thing. That is often a healthy exercise. However, in this case, they are being prodded by the … Continue reading
Parents don’t need to let their kids collect guns and hand grenades to be bad parents. (see previous post) I happened to be having breakfast out with my wife yesterday morning, next to a booth containing four young boys and their parents. The adults (and I use that term advisedly) pretty much ignored the kids while they destroyed that entire … Continue reading
The latest round in the race for corporate greed honors goes to the retailers that have already started putting up Christmas decorations. It is still two weeks before Halloween and six weeks before Thanksgiving, not to mention ten weeks before Christmas. As if it is not already bad enough that the greedy politicians have so perverted “campaign season” to mean … Continue reading
We have seen several more incidents of high school violence over the last few days, each of which seems sadder than the last. The reasons for these acts are much deeper than the excuses we get in the news media: “He’s a Goth.” “He’s an atheist.” “He’s a loner.” The incidents themselves run the gamut for nooses being hung to … Continue reading