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Showing posts from December, 2014

As the Pendulum Swings

Not a fun topic, but something I've been thinking about: We’ve been asked repeatedly, angrily and condescendingly: What is it about No Means No that you don’t understand?! What I’d like to know is when did No Means No turn into Only Yes Means Yes (my words, no one else’s) as seems to be the new normal, particularly on college campuses ? I remember seeing an informal poll once where women were asked if they would prefer to be asked before someone kisses them for the first time. Having just recently (recent to that poll, not to today!) been interested in a very hard-to-get woman of whom I asked that very question (she said Yes!), I was sure the majority opinion would be that they prefer to be asked. In fact, it was overwhelmingly the other way, like almost unanimous (though I have a feeling the women were thinking only of guys they would actually want to have kiss them, not some random street miscreant). I could give an actual timeline and list of all the conflicting mes

I love this guy, even if he is a grump...which helps explain why some people claim to love me too, I guess.

From a recent interview with Bill Murray in Rolling Stone: Doing a Q&A at a Toronto movie theater, Murray is asked, "How does it feel to be Bill Murray?" – and he takes the extremely meta query seriously, asking the audience to consider the sensation of self-awareness. "There's a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate . . . up and down your spine," Murray says. "And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile. So what's it like to be me? Ask yourself, ‘What's it like to be me? ' The only way we'll ever know what it's like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself that's where home is." I love this, though too often, when I am being me is when I like me least of all…and it most frequently occurs when I open my mouth.

Christmas Magic

This morning on Facebook, I posted a reference to one of my 2 favorite Christmas songs coming on the radio and wrote:   I know I'm totally in the Christmas Spirit when I'm driving to work down rte 52 after a wonderful Penns Table breakfast with Michael Rellahan , and I hear the opening chords to my favorite Christmas song...and as now seems to be a Christmas tradition, by the end, I have tears streaming down my face. Dang song gets to me every single year at least once. ‪#‎ sucharomantic And my sister Laurie asked why I like it so much and then mentioned how she has a fave song that she hasn’t heard yet but had rules about how she needed to hear it, which, not surprisingly, are my rules exactly , as she wrote:   “I own the song, but it has to happen organically - no cheats allowed! Guess I better stream Christmas music on my laptop as I wrap today, coz time is running out, and as the singer says, "It's Christmas time!" and...."Santa Claus is C

Deliverance from Evil

Sitting in Quaker Meeting yesterday I had a rare (religion-related) insight. I say “rare” because I’m fairly certain that there are so many people in Meeting on any given First Day who are focusing so much more directly and concentratedly on communicating with God than I am, when I am more likely to be thinking about things like this  (an oldey but favey of mine from 5+ years ago on my old blog). It struck me that while we spend so many hours and so much of our life in Meeting trying to learn important messages from God, some of the most important lessons, like compassion and tolerance and loving unconditionally, can be best learned, not from God, but only from our interactions, and often the most painful interactions, with other human beings. And those challenges, not just experiencing those tough interactions with people, but learning how to address the pain and anger with compassion, tolerance and love, come no more easily to us than picking up a banjo and playing an intricat

Now, some would say, all I need to do is take my own damn advice!

I had intended to make this a far longer post, but in retrospect, even though it meant a lot to me at the time, and seemed like it would take a lot to explain, in retrospect, it was not very earth-shattering and will probably be fairly simple to summarize. A month or so ago, with prodding from my friend Mike Rellahan, I requested a meeting with Republican Congressman-elect, Ryan Costello. And somewhat to my surprise, within a few days, I received a response from his aide, accepting my request and suggesting a time and date to meet. So a few weeks ago, after a great deal of thought, and not a little angst, I went to his office in downtown West Chester and met. I can't say I was entirely surprised, but I was certainly encouraged, that I not only liked him but more importantly, liked his approach, and there were very few things on which we disagreed. On the other hand, I made a point of keeping my 3 topics, the 3rd of which we agreed to keep off-the-record, which I understand mean

Presidential Prognosticatin'

This week's McLatchy-Marist poll has Romney and Bush leading a Republican field of 15 potential candidates when GOP voters were asked who they would support: Mitt Romney: 19% Jeb Bush: 14% Chris Christie: 9% Mike Huckabee: 9% Ben Carson: 8% Rand Paul: 5% Ted Cruz: 4% Rick Perry: 4% Paul Ryan: 3% Rick Santorum: 3% Marco Rubio: 3% Scott Walker: 3% John Kasich: 2% Bobby Jindal: 1% Carly Fiorina: 1% Unless Rs vote in Iowa the way the Iowan Ds did in 2004, choosing Kerry based on his electability, over Howard Dean, who I'm sure they liked more, I don't see the Rs nominating any of the top candidates above. I think there are only a handful of serious possibilities of getting nominated above, but foremost is Paul Ryan. I see him as the favorite and I also think he can beat Hilary. Other serious possible R nominees: Romney - maybe, but not exciting enough as a candidate, not to mention as a person Bush and Christie - their unfavorables are too high among

Just a tweet, tweet post

I can't resist posting these tweets: "Of course Republicans respect Putin. He tanked an economy, started an illegal war, and hates gays." — @SkepticPugilist So, this whole 'lame duck' thing is really slowing Obama down eh ? — @amyewalter

Do you see what I see?

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One of my favorite riddles, if it even is one, is: Can you see farther in the daytime or the night time?   Spoiler alert, or, what we used to call the answer to the question, is that even though the obvious answer is daytime, you know it can’t be daytime or the question wouldn’t be worth asking. But then the quandary becomes Why or How can it be nighttime, when it’s dark out and we obviously can’t see as far? And so the riddle is best answered with a question: Can you see stars in the daytime? J Sitting in (Quaker) Meeting this past Sunday, I decided to do something that I rarely ever do in Meeting, which is to close my eyes. (The reason is because I am almost certain to do what a certain someone had done right next to me this past First Day – fall asleep!) And when I did close them, I decided to just watch the inside of my eyelids. Well, actually I don’t know if that’s what I really see when I shut my eyes. What I do see seems to fall into at least two categories. The

Hopefully I write one of these in less time than it takes me to write some of the blog posts i've been wanted to post

When I grow up…ok…retire…there are three books I want to write: 1 – On Fame ·         I want to interview famous people to ask them what it means to be famous o    Is it what they always wanted? o    Was it worth it? o    What do they wish they had done differently? o    What advice would they give to someone they see whose fame is continuing to grow, maybe too fast? o    Do they miss anonymity? o    Does the idea of their fame decreasing scare them? o    How has it impacted the people they knew before they got famous? ·         And I want to interview: o    the uber-famous, from ex-Presidents to Taylor Swift (!) to Michael Jordan o    the medium famous – the D-listers o    the once famous who are no more o    the 15 minutes of famesters, …for all of whom there’d be different kinds of questions. 2 – Aphorisms/Truisms ·         What are the basic things we should all know – from: o      the best known – the key to real estate is

Letter II

...and as promised, here is the letter that was in the Daily Local on 12/9/14: http://www.dailylocal.com/opinion/20141209/obamas-economy-strategy-remains-healthy-and-stable It is such a reflection of the conservative-leaning mainstream media that so few of these facts are ever publicized. There was a conference of conservatives in Washington DC many years ago where a Frank Luntz-type announced a new strategy to the eager participants - that heretofore, they should never refer to the media without emphasizing that it was a left-wing mainstream media or a liberal press - yeegods! It's been a remarkably effective campaign, even though there is easily shown evidence that if anything, it is the exact opposite. And the letters and calls published in the Local are so incredibly one-sided, I really want to try to at least present some facts to the readers who so easily gloss over the almost daily drumbeat of positive news buried in the business section, adding in what is v

DLN Letter of 11/20/14

I had a letter to the Daily Local published yesterday, but before I post a link to that one here, I should go back a few weeks to the one that was published around 11/20/14 that the Daily Local never posted to their website. People who don't get the Local have asked me to let them know when they get in so they can read them, and so here it is: Along with the appointed experts on the election last week, I thought I might add my non-expert observations of last week’s elections. It seems that except in the case of our wonderful new Governor, voters rejected the Democratic party almost across the board. That is, we rejected the party responsible for 65 straight months of economic growth, a record 56 months of consecutive private sector job growth, unemployment falling from 10.1% to 5.8%, (after losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month when Bush left office, the country is now adding a minimum of 200,000 jobs per month) the budget deficit reduced by two-thirds, and almost daily records in

Troll self-revealed! And his query answered.

Following up on my post below about the RW troll, that also referred to my having been impressed by Mr. Oleck's lack of hesitation in identifying himself in previous posts, as it turns out, they are one and the same. Thank you, sir, and I understand your confusion over how to avoid the anonymous tag. Blogger.com makes it harder than necessary to avoid that. So, to reply to your question regarding the President's impact on the price of oil, I am at a disadvantage for a few reasons. I do very little online between 5pm Friday and Monday morning, and further, since the Local is so bad at posting letters to the editor, or, thankfully, Sound-Off, for that matter, I don't remember what I wrote exactly, but that said, here is my reply regarding your questions. From this link, you can see an excellent summary of Obama's involvement, but highlighting here: Here are some of the other measures recently taken by the administration to boost domestic oil production: * An incr

Gotta problem with me?! Let's have coffee and we'll tawk.

Unfortunate that I even need to write this, but there is an anonymous right wing troll on my site who posts occasionally literate comments, so I feel a need to state that my policy, heretofore not posted, is that unless I know the commenter personally, as I usually do, or unless the person identifies themself instead of hiding behind a cowardly nickname, I won’t reply to their comments. And I want this site vitriol-free, so if your post is respectful, I will generally enjoy engaging in any discussion you’d like to have. And that includes you, Mr. Oleck, whom I have complimented in the past for your courage in identifying yourself without hesitation. But I don’t want to get into a lot of back and forth because I’ve found that there is rarely any point in trying to convince each other of something that we are so strongly in opposition to.

I don't even know why they make any other kind of cookies besides chocolate chip cookies.

If you want to know what I think of Oatmeal Raisin cookies, and I'm sure you woke up this morning wondering exactly that, watch this video, and substitute the words "eating oatmeal raisin cookies" for the words "drinking merlot" and you'll get the drift. As someone wiser and funnier than me once said: "Oatmeal raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues." OK, I'll just cut and paste it here, but the video link at the top is funnier: Jack : If they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking Merlot. Miles Raymond : No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fu**ing Merlot! And now I feel a need to apologize to merlot, which is one of the few wines I actually occasionally like.