Cheers to St. Patrick, Ireland's Patron Saint from England. I’m not big on conspiracies, but it seems to me St. Patrick’s Day is getting the shaft. I’m ranking it No. 5 behind Christmas, New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving and Easter. Halloween is for kids and future diabetics. Check out the top ten lists of our most popular holidays, and it’s not on any of them. It is ranked behind Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day and even Labor [...] READ MORE
Recovering from a stroke—an attack on the brain—is a tough way to run for the U.S. Senate. The most indelible story of the recent midterm election, other than what appears to be a rejection of election denial and most candidates running on that premise, might be called the Ballad of John Fetterman. It revolved around the stroke that befell him just four days before the May Primary from which he emerged with the Democratic nomination for one [...] READ MORE
Despite jokes about dead people voting, election security is strong. It’s been quiet on the American front for many years now. Or so it seems. Even as I absorb the reality of observing three quarters of a century of a blessed life, I don’t think of myself as having lived through any great historical movements that dramatically changed the course of American life. Looking back, I guess when something is part of your past you don’t think [...] READ MORE
Camels were cool in the old days and reportedly the favorite bad habit of doctors who would walk a mile for one. As a member of the jingle generation, I have all kinds of stuff cluttering my mind. Blame it on TV commercials— the most pervasive purveyor of advertising slogans and jingles. I had a good time with this subject a few years back, and some bear repeating— along with a few others in this updated version. [...] READ MORE
Is there a difference between old and too old? Looking ahead to becoming a centenarian. Eight years ago, when I was a wet-behind-the-ears age of sixty-six, I wrote about “joining the legions of 90-and-older” one day, which was still almost two dozen years into the future. Well, that one day would have been October 7, 2037, which doesn’t seem so far away now. Therefore, with increasing optimism, I have expanded my goal to breaking the 100-year age [...] READ MORE
The origins of the words we use are often primitive, but we shouldn’t abandon them too quickly. Every once in a while, I run into a language purist who likes to take issue with stuff I have written as being wrong-headed or just plain wrong. These are people who think you shouldn’t use words like “stuff,” as I just did, because it is lazy. Find the definitive word, they’ll lecture, because stuff means unspecified things. Still, there [...] READ MORE
The newly-enacted Constitution may have granted the right to own slaves, but it’s worth a lot more than the paper it’s printed on. Got thinking about the U.S. Constitution as I slowly savored my morning snack of two spoonfuls of Smuckers peanut butter along with a handful of baby carrots. You know, with a name like Smuckers it’s got to be good. As I vigorously licked it off the roof of my mouth, a news story caught [...] READ MORE
What, me worry? Time marches on ’til the music stops. You aren’t old until you really believe you are. If you use age as an excuse for not doing things you don’t want to do, the day will come when you are too old to do anything. You’re thinking you’ve paid your dues. Now it’s time to let those whippersnappers in their forties, fifties and sixties do it. The problem is that if you give in to [...] READ MORE
Uncle Sam’s call became more of a challenge during the Vietnam War. Frederick Richard “Rick” Ohler’s name is just one of about 58,000, mostly men and barely old enough to be treated as adults had they avoided military service. They are all dead. Rick, at 24, was one of the older soldiers in the 519th MI Battalion and, like many of us, he was an intelligence analyst. Our compound was in a rather rural place known as [...] READ MORE
Cavemen unite! Who needs science and history? We were almost there, moving quite smoothly toward wholesale vaccinations leading to herd immunity, and then, once again, partisan politics reared its ugly head over an issue that shouldn’t have been political at all. It should have been about saving lives and getting back to normal, having learned lessons that may avert hundreds of thousands more from dying if another pandemic sweeps over our land. Now that the masks are [...] READ MORE
