"No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
You really never leave
Keith Olbermann calls for a boycott of Fox News. Boycott how? Here’s how: when you find yourself in a bar or restaurant with the TV set to Fox News, find an owner or manager and tell him you’ll take your business elsewhere if he doesn’t change the channel, and calmly explain why. Keith then lists […]
It’s Memorial Day. My father died on this day, two years ago. Some time after his death I posted a letter of his to this blog. The letter was about his WWII service as a US Navy Armed Guard gunner aboard the MS Chester Sun, a civilian tanker. Just today, I received an email from […]
First it was Arthur Godfrey, now this. RV parks and barbershops everywhere will be draped in black. I grew up with Paul Harvey on the radio, and must admit I enjoyed his staccato delivery and homespun manner. At some point, of course, I realized “homespun” encompassed a lot of hatred. Hatred of blacks, of hippies, […]
One of the men I flew with in the early 1980s, Dave Baker, died last Thursday. We called him Bull; I blogged about him a few months ago. Bull had been a prisoner of war; captured and held after being shot down in Cambodia near the end of the war in Vietnam. They teach you […]
When I drove disabled veterans for the local VA hospital in Tucson, one of my first regular patients was an elderly man who made daily trips from the VA hospice to the university hospital for radiation oncology treatments. One day he pointed out several areas of skin cancer on his arms, neck, and face, then […]
My friend Dick sent this John Stuart Mill quotation in honor of Veterans Day: War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing […]
Dropping ballast in anticipation of retirement: satellite radio. Talk about not living up to promises. When I listen to Sirius today, not only do I hear the exact same playlists of songs I heard five years ago (particularly on the Blues Channel, my one-time favorite), I hear commercials. Yeah, terrestrial radio is ten times worse, […]
I was fascinated by this exchange during Katie Couric’s interview of Sarah Palin the other night: Couric: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians? Palin: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears […]