We in the United States can easily lose perspective and forget that compared to most of the world, we have no problems. Watch as unarmed Ukrainian protestors are shot down by police and military snipers. But they don’t give up. It’s heartbreaking, ghastly footage. Unbelievable. Could you do that? I couldn’t. And they did it…
The pain of cashews and broccoli
February 23, 2024
About two weeks before Mom had her cancer surgery on April 4, 2013, she began to starve herself. I’ve written before why she did it. The law of unintended consequences bit us all in the ass: Mom, her parents, the nuns, Tim, me—everybody. Collectively, we were screwed. There’s no recourse. It happened, and it can’t…
No context for male beauty
February 23, 2024
Our popular culture is very cruel. I know, because I spent ten years in the factory that creates it. This cruelty bleeds over into the rest of our culture, which is deeply unhealthy. We hear on a daily basis about the stresses women are under to be beautiful. Although I have a certain amount of…
The joys of having a nonfunctional brain
February 22, 2024
The last coherent thing my father said to me was, “It’s hell when your brain doesn’t work.” Since I’d been knocked for a loop by the knowledge that we’d come to the end of the road, and now he’d have to go into hospice, I spoke without thinking. “Well, think of it as a vacation,”…
Watch for patterns
February 20, 2024
In Ghosts and Ballyhoo, one of the Lessons Learned is “Watch for Patterns,” pages 273-274. Watch for the patterns. They might help you perceive your destiny, make the right decisions, dodge a lot of grief, and endure that which you thought you couldn’t. A month ago, my cardiologist told me that I’d lost all the…
Lip servicing ourselves into hell
February 19, 2024
I recently joined Facebook. Against my will. Alas, it’s turned out to be what I feared: a place where uninformed opinions based entirely on emotions are hurled around like…like…this. “It began with a food fight between children.” That’s what Facebook is like, unfortunately. Today the Horror That Must Be Stopped was the bill that Democratic…
Beware what you wish for
February 18, 2024
I was once forced into a family dispute among people I neither knew nor liked. It started when I saw a young woman sitting on the porch of a house, waiting. The elderly man who lived there was a friend of my mother’s, so I approached and asked if there was anything wrong. My parents…
Stereotyping and making assumptions do not help
February 17, 2024
When actress Ellen Page announced that she’s gay, social media went wild, pro and con. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve seen Page only in Juno, a movie that I wasn’t able to finish. I’ve known too many people whose shtick is endless one-liners. My own father, in fact, hid behind puns, jokes, and…