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Tis The Season: Make It A Good One

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. I’m always shocked in November, usually when I’m dressing my turkey, that another year has passed so quickly. It’s a universal truth for those over the age of fifty that time becomes a sort of quantum equation we haven’t quite figured out. The days stretch, the years collapse, and suddenly we’re pulling holiday decorations out of closets again, wondering how it can possibly be time already. As our families are scattered across the country, and sometimes the world, holidays become more important. The holiday season isn’t the busiest ...

Can You Complete These Oxymorons?

Having taught all Core Elementary and Middle School Subjects (including Grammar, Spelling, and Writing, as part of our Language Arts Curriculum) in the Jamestown Public Schools in my career, one day at home when Chasy was about 6 years old, a Campbell Soup commercial came on TV and finished with their slogan of that time, “Soup is Good Food.” When she saw the words and heard the slogan, she asked why “good” and “food” didn’t rhyme. In my classroom, many times, I had students who wanted to know the same about words like rough, cough, through, and though, and other words like ...

Natural Sleep Is A Sometimes Gift

I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I’m blaming lack of sleep for all my bad decisions, and often for forgetting my purse. I need every excuse I can get. Last spring, I finally decided to try the natural sleep supplement Melatonin. Whoa, that’s good! If I needed some help to Slumbertown, 20 minutes after a Melatonin gummy, I was on the path. Zonk. Occasionally I needed two. But it wasn’t until a two-fer night that I finally read the directions. “Thirty minutes before bedtime, take two supplements and allow them to slowly dissolve.” Two Melatonins? The recommended dosage? ...

Old Bridges Of America

Driving south toward Key West, the road narrows, the sky spreads out, and the sea becomes your constant companion. It’s one of the most beautiful stretches of pavement in the country. But somewhere before Marathon, your eyes snag on something off to the right — something that doesn’t fit with the turquoise water and the postcard-perfect horizon. An old bridge with broken railings. Rust is bleeding down the concrete like old wounds. And grass — wild, waist-high grass — is growing straight out of what used to be a proud engineering marvel. The Old Seven Mile Bridge was once ...

One, Two, Three, What Are We Thankful For?

In 1969, a band called Country Joe and the Fish performed a song (written in 1967 by Country Joe McDonald) at the Woodstock Music Festival gathering at Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, NY. Included the lyrics, were the words “…and it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?” The song was a satirical protest of the Vietnam War, and was titled “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die.” Five days from today we will be celebrating my favorite holiday, the one requiring nothing more than a hearty appetite, a pillow on which to lay our heads to nap after devouring the feast of the day, ...

The Changing Face Of Warfare

Sadly, new technologies are often tested first in warfare, on the battlefield—not in commerce or for civilian use. For example, a new technology made its debut in World War I—the airplane. Initially thought of as a remarkable new invention to transport people and goods at speeds and distances never imagined—it became an effective intelligence gathering and killing tool over the trenches and battlefields of France. I suppose that if you go way back, to prehistoric times, the same kind of thing happened. The spear was probably invented to protect settlements from predators and to ...