Sunday Morning Coming Down

 Hours before Sunday's Super Bowl I went to check my numbers in the Pool at the Moose Lodge.  Steve, sitting across the bar started playing CCR songs.  His tastes and mine are similar.  I think I'm going to add some CCR to my phone playlist and skip the juke box. 8:00 AM is a little early for a doctors appointment.  There probably isn't an ideal time. It all depends.  Yesterday, I spent more time waiting for my car in the valet parking lines than I did in the Dr.'s Office, had a $20.00 co-pay for drawing blood for another appointment in two weeks, which to my mind means all the other tests I have taken in the past six weeks have been overblown in importance. Sunday Morning at church I arrived to discover three functional banana trees cut down, so that there could be other plants planted in the same place.  Some things will be eternally a mystery, even if they can be rationalized.  There is always a backstory. Joy Klein of Miami Dade County's Divis...

Your speech and your actions may be full of contradictions.  Sometimes your actions can be the source of both conflict and contradiction.  And yet I have come to understand that there are folks that are unaware of how they set things up to maximize contradiction and possibly conflict.  It may also be entirely intentional, as in "scrambling eggs to make an omelette." Did anyone ask the chicken how she felt about that?  Luckily, she probably doesn't care, even though she instinctively sits on her eggs until they hatch. A guy who lived on a farm before electricity, once explained this to me: "If the price of eggs is down, raise more chickens, if the price of eggs goes up, raise more chickens".  He left the farm to serve in the army and became a banker but always remembered farm wisdom and bucking hay. To be continued.

Just because you have an obscene amount of money does not necessarily make you an expert beyond your field.  Celebrities are often chastised for using their popularity to promote their views on public issues.  They may not have an obscene amount of money but their opinion may be overvalued because of their fame. The Uber rich can buy experts and their opinions to back up their own ideas.  Using other people, and social media to attract other people has become a way for rich folks to become "influencers" beyond what elected officials are.  It's the bully pulpit without standing for election.  And the wealth they have gathered can also insulate them from down turns in their popularity should they make a serious faux pas.   The Uber rich can literally buy something that may rightly be considered a public good or resource.  The Miami Heat Basketball Team was able to score waterfront property and move "uptown" from "Overtown" and get subsidies for thei...

Freeman, Darryl, Don, and I all pretty much retired from our jobs at the same time.  Since retirement we made an effort to get together for lunch on a monthly basis. Getting together with friends is a huge thing these days.  Much has been written about the importance of these kinds of connections for any number of reasons that relate to our overall enjoyment of life.   I'm currently reading a book by David Brooks, "How to Get to Know Somebody".  The short answer is: make sure they are seen, heard, and understood. This may take some time and  effort to get connected and do a better job of communicating. Speak less, listen more, I have opinions about way too many things and may fall short in listening and probably feel I should be heard more than listen to others but that is something I'm really working on and with some success. E-mails, text messages, and zoom meetings don't work as well for me, and others may think they are sufficient, a red herring type of...

June 25, 1973: White House counsel John Dean recounts his meetings with President Nixon to the Senate Watergate Committee: “I began by telling the President that there was a cancer growing on the Presidency, and if the cancer was not removed, he President himself would be killed by it.” If you were at home and watching the television you might have seen President Trump calling for people to walk to the Capitol and he would be with them on January 6th, 2021 .  Later in the afternoon it got ugly, and violently dangerous.  Some in the crowd were calling out to hang Mike Pence. Two Impeachment Trials, criminal indictments, and civil fraud, defamation and sexual abuse judgments are not the stuff of witch hunts and victimless crimes.  Chris Christie:  "He'll burn America to the ground to help himself," Christie said, in a direct address to the camera. "Every Republican leader says that in private. I'm the only one saying it in public."   In many ways the legal iss...

 I think it is a form of Karma that a former holder of this country's highest office and famous for snarky nicknames has a down low nickname from compliments of his own political party. 

I announced at the UU of Miami that I was going to set up a "cuss jar" at my house as a fund raiser of sorts.  Self imposing a fine when I said out loud " mother^$*()" when I should have just said "oh well".   Speaking to the minister after the service about my announcement he commented on a "Guest at Your Your Table" which was a Thanksgiving to Christmas fund raiser for the UU Service Committee.  You were supposed to make a donation daily which would be approximately what it would cost to feed another mouth. In concept it's good, its execution poses problems. The minister volunteered that he would be a bad candidate for a "cuss jar" as he never swore.  Conversation complete, I instinctively rolled my eyes and said a silent "oh well".