I hear ya, Bro. Not much about the world you see in front of you has seemed quite right from the beginning. Adults have drilled into you at every turn that you have to be honest, patient and kind, take turns, not be greedy, don’t cheat or steal or think you’re better or more deserving than anyone else. Practice the Golden Rule, don’t prey on those weaker, keep your promises, honor your commitments. But it seems everywhere you look, venality and aggression, vulgarity and dishonesty rule the day. Film stars, politicians, coaches, corporate titans, clergy and teachers knee deep in…
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If there’s one thing we know about the American electorate, it’s that we simply abhor “boots on the ground.” Trade embargoes, naval blockades, sudden kidnappings, targeted assassinations, torpedoed boats, bellicose warnings of worse yet to come—a good portion of us are jittery and suspicious for all that, but the larger voting public, much of it minimally informed as it tends to the demands of daily life, tends not to get apoplectic. But to contemplate American boots on anyone’s ground but our own, our sons and daughters sent into harm’s way on foreign soil—nope! We’re against it, to the tune of 62%…
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“When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.” —From George Washington’s address to the New York Legislature (26 June 1775) *** “When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state, and calls for an exercise of the power of dissolution.” —From Thomas Jefferson’s “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” (1774) *** “There never was…
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“Pops!” The salutation is not limited to the emphatic, even rambunctious hellos of reunion after a few months of separation on opposite coasts, but also, when I’m already here, as a request for my attention to some matter of apparent urgency to him. Say, a proposal for my participation in some imaginary game involving fire trucks and daring rescues of pets, or for some contemplative question heavy on his 3- and 2/3-year-old mind. A couple of nights ago, on a drive down the highway, it was the latter, and the question was, “Pops! Why are there trees?” Laughing about this…
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Certain tunes lodge in your brain from your earliest years. Depending on your age, you might have heard it on your mom’s “hi-fi,” your older sibling’s music app, or your third grade music education class (“Stand beside her, and guide her…”) before you got back to the business at hand of phonics instruction and the multiplication tables. It’s not much different than certain words or phrases that get imprinted on your brain for better and for worse early in life, words carrying their own music as they do. (“You DID it, yayyy!!”; “Stop that THIS MINUTE!”) An old friend of…