Under a Rock

I was spent Friday afternoon following class at USM. The long week of trying to write marketing collateral, hitting an article deadline, a return to tutoring, and then, sitting through my nearly three-hour-long history class, pushed me past my energy tipping point.

Back home, waiting for Mary to arrive from work and thinking about what to make for dinner, I flicked on the television. Five minutes of politics was enough. For whatever reason, I changed the channel to a music station and on my screen was a young woman who could easily have been one of the students I’ve been spending time with tutoring and subbing. Except that she was in a “strange” video; blood was dripping from her nose and she appeared in outfits ranging from a white uniform, to yellow sweat suit, all the while commencing to sing about “bad guys and tough guys.” The video was jarring enough to keep me there, watching the song called, “Bad Guy.”

Saturday, sitting in the Lee’s Tire waiting room while getting my snow tires swapped-out for summer treads, I happened to be paging through the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times: Who was looking back at me from page 17? The face of Billie Eilish, the young woman from Friday’s video, which commences with Eilish saying, “I’ve taken out my Invisalgn.”

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Moving On

I was deeply affected by the events in Charlottesville. Many of the emotions I experienced in a visceral way, were flashbacks to Janaury, when Mark was killed. Another young person, with passion and concern for others, was senselessly killed by someone selfish and self-centered.

While there were a host of stories about Heather Heyer, an activist described in one as “a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised,” there was a sameness and quality to these that all made them read similarly after awhile. Her story deserved more. Too often, Heyer became an afterthought, as once again, media made it about “All Donald, all the time.”

Foolishly, I thought I could add a different context, one that was unique and personal, based upon our own journey over the past seven months since Mark’s death. Continue reading

Hold the Bacon

Bacon is popular. How popular you ask? Well, Americans eat nearly 18 pounds of it, yearly. Our English brethren, the Brits, consume an equal amount each year. Supposedly, bacon is addictive because it contains six types of umami, which produces an addictive neurochemical response.

Don’t tell that to President Obama. He’s made a point of denying bacon to all prisoners locked up in federal prison facilities. Does our brilliant president not realize that he’s going to cause a whole lot of jonesing in federal jails?

Actually, the feds have removed bacon, along with pork chops and ham, along with all other pig products from menus at 122 federal prisons. That means the nation’s 206,000 federal inmates won’t be tasting savory bacon until they’re back on the streets. Continue reading

My Truth is Better Than Yours

Boiling every political argument down as being either conservative or liberal is a limiting critique—a binary straightjacket, so to speak. This kind of posturing has poisoned the current political well for sure.

What it’s also done very well is to create an undeserved smugness on one side, or the other. Where this smugness often gets exhibited in these heady digital days is on social media platforms—Twitter and Facebook, mainly.

Like the other day. Continue reading

Convenient for Whom?

7-Eleven--feeding our dysfunction.

7-Eleven–feeding our dysfunction.

There was an old advertising campaign for the 7-Eleven stores that had the tagline, “thank heaven for Seven-Eleven.” It was prominent during the 1980s, I think.

7-Eleven is one of a plethora of convenience store chains dotting the American landscape. Coffee and convenience foods are an American birthright, and stores like 7-Eleven keep our addictions sated, and employ a segment of the American workforce that lack skills and other intangibles. Continue reading