What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Shakespeare may have seen the process of naming as irrelevant based on Juliet’s soliloquy stated above. I beg to differ as I start out 2023 with a topic I explored about seven years ago. Naming can be both mystical and empowering. It may move you to tears, as it often does when the names of victims are read aloud on anniversaries [...] READ MORE
Jake, our smiling Corgi and the last chapter of my seven-dog life. When I get to thinking I’m old and approaching senility, I try to remember that in dog years I’m barely ten. In many ways, dogs are like milestones along my life’s journey. A dog’s life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Dogs are over the hill, or under the ground, before they reach 16. When you’re lazy, people accuse you of dogging it. When [...] READ MORE
Reading can be a challenge to your attention span. Then again, it’s a way to get one back — if you ever had one. Mary and I have another day of isolation before we can venture out into the real world. We both tested positive for Covid earlier this week while on a family vacation at a beautiful home on the shore of Lake Champlain just a handful of miles below the Canadian border. It was a [...] READ MORE
Life isn’t always a lark, so savor those happy memories and moments. “There is no happiness,” according to one proverb. “There are only moments of happiness.” Nobody is always happy, and the most you can hope for is happiness in small doses that sustain you over a lifetime. Often it is the memory of happy times that fuels overall enjoyment and contentment. The human mind is empowered with the magic of transforming unhappy times into happy memories [...] READ MORE
Do you really love me or is this the end of our budding bromance? I usually wait until Wednesday for my weekly blog, but I have some exciting news to share and I couldn’t wait. I had to get this on record before my 15 minutes of fame runs out. You see, I am apparently very important to the Trump family and several of their closest confidants. Go figure. The President asks about me a lot, even [...] READ MORE
