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Showing posts from September, 2014

Strangers in the night...and the people we met in Providence, too - PART ONE

Cheryl and I spent most of the week before last in Providence, Rhode Island, for my annual work conference, which is alternately boring, informative and loads of fun. Yes, and occasionally even easy to dance to. Cheryl has been coming the last two years – New Orleans last year – and we have such a great time. This year, it seemed like we were making friends whenever/wherever we went out. This is the first of three stories about people we met. The last night we were there, as we were walking to the Federal Hill district, which is full of great restaurants, we stopped at an intersection for a red light as an especially loud motorcycle whizzed by. The next 10 minutes were like a scene from a movie, with a particularly intriguing character inserting himself momentarily into our lives and then disappearing into the night for good but not yet from my psyche, days later. I’d love to write it like a novel, but don’t really have time or talent to do it justice. He was 50-something,

Oh, the pain! (Or...An Ode to Pain)

Another thought on my hurried post of 8/22/14 below about Validation and the need not just to control our destinies but the importance of overcoming adversity. My point, or more directly, my emphasis there is not meant to ignore adversity completely. In fact, I think it’s crucial that we embrace Pain. Honor it. Work through it. Wrestle with it. Wring its neck, but not until you’ve squeezed every drop of agony and emotion and, well, pain, that you can before saying OK, done – get outta here. I am not going to let you or the event that caused me this pain, define me. I am better than you and I am stronger than you. I am going to honor what I’ve lost by making myself a better, stronger person because of you’ve put my through. Hmmm…I didn’t really intend this to be a personal letter to Pain, and I hope it doesn’t mind me taking our personal correspondence public.
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Even less time tonight than yesterday, so I real quickie here. It se... I actually started this post almost 8 months ago, and it turns out I wasn't kidding. I didn't even have time to get through the 2nd sentence! But incredibly, I still remember what I was going to say. It se...ems to me that ever since he took the job, where we progressives have been wanting Obama to move Fast-Forward, and conservatives have been wanting him to move in Reverse, his approach from day one has been to simply move at the speed of Play. And in the end, or at least 5+ years into his 8 year Presidency, the economy has continued to improve from where we had been losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month and are now disappointed, like this morning, when we gain less than 200,000/month; we have national health care; gays have the right to marry in a growing number of states (and, I predict by the end of his second term, the Supreme Court will be forced against their preference to admit that discr

He's obviously aware that City Hall usually has pee on the outside and is full of BS on the inside

A beautiful new park was dedicated at City Hall in Philly yesterday: http://www.inquirer.com/local/20140905_Dilworth_Park_officially_opens.html and according to the story, "hundreds of Philadelphians endured more than an hour of speeches under a blazing sun and still wanted to stay". My guess is that none of the speeches included what one person was quoted in the story as saying that was probably truer than any words spoken by any of the politicians: "It is really nice. It brings out City Hall. It brightens it up," James said. "Now we just have to make sure nobody messes it up, you know, with urine." I love that town.  

Probably no brains involved in saying it in any case

I know it's a tough job to speak live on television without time to think about what you're saying, so I have a feeling the person who said this on Morning Joe this morning would probably have liked to have this observation edited out: "After seeing those beheadings by ISIS, it's no-brainer that we have to take them seriously." Ouch. That said, there probably weren't two other people who heard the double meaning there the way I did.