Monday, August 29, 2022

Where Barnum Meets Goebbels

After seeing a show yesterday, Bart took me for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen. And what should be playing on the TV but Fox News?
Turns out that ALL the news in America during the time we sat there was about how rotten Democrats are. Who knew?
Bart wisely sat with his back to that knuckle-dragging trash.
Fox News is where Phineas Taylor Barnum meets Paul Joseph Goebbels.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Like Water in a Sahara of Student Debt

I graduated from state university in 1977 with a student loan debt of slightly less than $500. Of course, that was when we all agreed that it was useful, even imperative, for members of an advanced, civilized society to have easy access to higher education.

That was before we decided to chuck all that and just let predatory Wall Street banks make a lifelong meal out of American students.

So why does the Washington Post Editorial Board choose to IGNORE that last point? I think you know.

The Post whines about Biden's student debt relief. You know what really takes money from that "broad tax base" that the Washington Post Editorial Board has suddenly discovered? The military-industrial complex squandering $1.7 trillion on some lame fighter jet.

Student debt relief, on the other hand, provides a cascade of social benefits both immediate and long-term. Do you think any of those people who didn’t go to college sell goods and services that those whose debt has been eased will now, for the first time, be able to AFFORD?

I presume, btw, that the Editorial Board includes a walrus and a carpenter.

While Waiting in Oncology

She was reading When

Our Lives Fall Apart, her hair 

lightly bleached, hopeful.

Art by Ioan Popei


Thursday, August 18, 2022

Saturday, August 13, 2022

Attention Must Not Be Paid

We crossed paths with a young family that was taking a walk — father, mother and a boy about 8. Daddy was staring at his phone, mommy was staring at her phone, but sonny wasn’t staring at his cute canary-yellow phone. Instead, he was smiling at my dog.

Someday, however, he too will ignore his immediate reality most of the time. He’ll learn soon enough.

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

How to Change Your Mind

Forgot what you came in here for? There's a scientific explanation for this. 

When you leave one room and go into another, your short-term memory "resets," orienting itself to the details of your new environment. 

Sometimes, one of the things that gets flushed as irrelevant happens to be whatever you were thinking about in the other room. 

So if you want to change your mind, change your room!

The Doctor on the Facts of Life

Lies such as those told on Fox News do have this advantage: they can be fashioned to perfectly suit the audience’s most ridiculous fantasies and ugliest prejudices. The truth does not. It is merely absolutely necessary for survival.

Monday, August 1, 2022

A Message from the Lone Ranger


I taught and I write, I do what I can. Whatever happens, I will know I was on the right side because I have consciously tried to act with empathy and sanity. The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. Mindfulness, courage and truth. I don't know if they'll carry the day, but I know they're the only values worth having.