“Normal doesn’t exist.”
I glanced at my girlfriend, who was staring defiantly at me, as if aware that she had just shattered my fondest illusion. She was well into her sixties, as was I, and a professional. I assumed she would have learned about “normal” earlier in life. Continue reading
In his assault on Gaza, Netanyahu employed an ingenious tactic. He called it war. Had he called it slaughter, the world might have intervened. But he tricked us. He called it war, and we’ve been discussing it ever since. Continue reading
Aleksei Navalny’s choice to return to Russia had been sheer stupidity. He had climbed back into Putin’s ring. To have the man once again in his power so intensely delighted the Russian potentate that he did not trust himself to be near him, to pronounce his name, even to know who he was. Wisely, Vladimir Putin outsourced his cherished prisoner. Continue reading
Maybe it was because the sauna had opened late that day. The sauna attendant could have been a little tense, irritable, not himself. Or perhaps it just took too long to explain the rules of the sauna, especially to someone so blithe about violating them. Continue reading
Keeping something in the fridge too long makes our minds up for us. It’s a wasteful approach to handling leftovers, but once they start to stink no one blames us for throwing them out. Not to be passed off as lightly are politicians who resort to the same flabby practice. Continue reading
No day passes without a news story broadcasting that Trump has lied again. So what? None of us are surprised. At this point in Trump’s public frolic, we know he lies. But what if we were to learn that Trump’s words are not lies, but law? Continue reading
Conflicts within families constitute not only the bitterest strife on Earth, but have the potential to cultivate the subtlest and most enduring abuse. When the misconduct involves an elderly father and his children – the subject of the present inquiry – the urgency of attending to the matter, as well as the complexity, increases tenfold. Continue reading
The creatures of the hadal deep do not know they are at the bottom of the ocean and certainly do not know they are at the bottom of the food chain. Innocent of God’s grace, they have also been spared the agony of having to choose between their existential attachments and salvation. God’s masterpiece, bred of Adam and Eve, was not so spared, whence the source of that creature’s anguish. Continue reading
There you have it from John Adams himself: Equal distribution of wealth among the people is requisite for turning out a mature constituency that will vote rationally in its own interest, thus electing a government that will attend to the interests of that multitude, thereby preserving a true democracy. But not all of us want that. Continue reading
Jesus is recorded as saying the poor will be with you always, perhaps his politic way of saying the money changers will be with you always, that is, the rich, who create the poor. This has turned out to be true. Our pox today is how monstrous large the discrepancy between poor and rich has become. Continue reading