Well, I guess this is The End. But don't roll the credits yet. I finally figured out how to find my previous Thoughts in the Lansing Star. The actual on-line version, I mean. My hand-written chicken ...
All right. I'll admit it. I'm scared. Now I'm not one who scares easily. I spent a year doing my best to avoid little guys in black pajamas with automatic weapons who wanted to hurt me. But I was 19 ...
Turkey. Not the country. Tryptophan has taken its toll therefore I will keep Thoughts this week to short manageable bursts. But first, this week’s bumper sticker: “Fake quotes will ruin the internet”-- ...
My political wakening, or perhaps nativity, was in 1964 back in the Dark Ages. That was the publishing date of a tome entitled "The Unmaking of a Mayor" by William F. Buckley. Buckley is credited with ...
A most unusual and perhaps unsettling position at this moment. I am writing this three days before what is being touted as the most (fill in the blank) election in our nation's history. But you are going ...
The calendar tells me that this column will be the last before election day. And this places extreme pressure upon your correspondent. If there's going to be a round up of troublemakers after the election ...
Sociologists, psychologists, historians, and just plain society watchers are going to be very busy in the next many years analyzing and dissecting all that came about in this pandemic year of 2020. The ...
Have you ever changed your mind? I don't mean like when your kid hounds you so doggedly about your 'no' that you give in to the inevitable and say 'yes'. And I don't mean in a restaurant, when your initial ...
Seems like a lot of small but significant things are bouncing around my brain like an old-fashioned pinball game, so my best bet is to keep to short shots across the bow. Or is that across the brow? ...
While dealing with the traffic on Meadow Street the other day, I saw a vanity license plate which set me off on a flight of fantasy. You'll see why in the following paragraphs. It was a New York plate, ...
Imagine the phrase 'peace in the Middle East'. Picture it, let the words and implications roll around your tongue and brain. Even if you’re not politically minded, you have an innate sense of the historical ...
In certain theological circles, there's a loose theory (or hypothesis, I guess), that goes like this: approximately every five-hundred years or so, organized Christianity seems to experience an intense ...
It's a holiday weekend, and I've had a week off from one of my favorite tasks, which is writing this column. The one-week respite might have made me a bit lazy, or perhaps it's the fact that I have been ...
I've been wracking my brain for a day or two, trying to remember a not so famous quote from Alan Greenspan when he was chair of the Federal Reserve. It was in the early nineties, I think, and the tech ...
The politics and pandemonium, the panic and punditry of American presidential elections has fascinated me since 1968. When I stayed up quite late on two summer nights, listening on radio to the two nominating ...
Clearing up the mess on my pseudo-desk this week. As the Muse says, "Welcome to my little slice of chaos." Another way of seeing this week's column is trying to organize my news clippings into different ...
This observer would rather move his thoughts to more pleasant summer-like climes, but the conjunction of several headlines this past week barges in upon my August reveries. As I write, New York's 12th ...
I am a consummate worrier, in case you haven’t figured that out. Combine that with my passion for news, and you might then figure out why I haven’t owned a television in twenty years. Nail-biting worry ...
You, dear reader, do not need to be reminded that there's plenty to be concerned about 'out there'. I've tried in some columns to look at some of the positive and uplifting things that are going on in ...
'Thoughts' could be described this week as 'scattershot', quick shots or sheshoutslves, I guess. Maybe if I go quickly from thought to thought I can help with the artificial intelligence dictation program ...
As I dictate this week's column -- 'this just in', as they used to say in the old media days -- the Supreme Court case I have written about previously involving 'faithless electors' has been decided. ...
Like much of the country and the world, I've been preoccupied with the all pervasive issue of COVID-19, its effects upon the economy, our society, and our physical and emotional health. Of course, this ...
It appears that it may be safe to back away from contemplation of the COVID-19 disasters. I don't mean to turn our backs on it: we need to keep our antennae up, eyes open, and continue to listen to the ...
Seen at the Children’s Garden: “We Grow Through, What We Go Through”. As I write this week’s musings, I am in an anticipatory mode. I am preparing to see my granddaughter for the first time since early ...
It was the first week in April, 1996. I remember the day because it was the first week of my debut on The Morning Report on WHCU. Moving my afternoon talk show to morning drive was thrilling, scary, and ...
Considering the well- and lesser-known stressors to our common psyche these days, I think up to this point we as a people should have been patting our collective back and perhaps saying, "Who's a good ...
Let's go back to a column I wrote a couple of months ago. It was before the pandemic upended our world, and what I'd like to discuss today was actually postponed by the lockdown. The historic arguments ...
My attention seems drawn in several directions this week. It looks like things are gradually loosening, though with well deserved trepidation on the part of many. Our fears seem well grounded, but I'm ...
Winston Churchill spoke about the "end" of the Battle of Britain in 1940: "It is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning." In a way, that seems to apply to a view of our ...
"The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the wind thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror whose crystal surface removes a ...
A very important person in my life posed a rhetorical question in our appropriate socially distant manner the other day. With heartfelt sentiment she asked: "How did we get into this mess?" Now it's ...
I quite literally bumped into one of my bestest, longtime friends on Cayuga Street and she asked me if I had a face mask upon my embarrassed answer in the negative, she took me into her store and sewed ...
"You have too much time on your hands." This from the service writer of my auto repair shop. I had stopped there while noting the unusual emptiness of the parking lot, indicating that although auto repair ...
Last week Thoughts turned out much better than originally conceived. My inability to use email to transmit it to our esteemed editor seemed an insurmountable obstacle. I don't own a computer or iPhone ...
In the midst of rhapsodizing the merits of paper, last week, I had a few sharp readers tell me that they wish I had thought some more on the disappearance of toilet paper. Well as Kurt Vonnegut once said, ...
I've read a couple of news stories recently and found some connections which have personal import, and some regrets, as well. The operative word, here, is 'read'. I do love to read, as is probably obvious. ...
Reference my previous 'Thoughts' about a 'safe injection zone', otherwise known to we, the doubtful and cynical, as 'shooting galleries' where opioid users can go to shoot up illegally obtained substances ...
I always liked the game show sound of the phrase 'lightning round', so in order to clear out a lot of niggling 'thoughts' from my pseudo-desk, here goes a 'lightning round' of Thoughts. Call them a moving ...
The third and final 'chapter' of my examination of the Electoral College, and a crucial (perhaps historic) decision to be made by the Supreme Court in this current session. Again, to reiterate an important ...
The Electoral College. No classes, no professors, no students. No tuition, no scholarships, no student loans. Not a place, but a compromise, an idea. And, overall, the most unloved institution in America. ...
It's interesting to hear and read the anguished cries of many punsters and pundits, those opinion makers of all persuasions, that 'this' or 'that' occurrence or issue or personage is dividing America ...
I'm writing this week's "Thoughts" in a hurried, maybe scattershot manner. I'm involved in a secret plot to kidnap the groundhog. I'm not sure what my secret 'gang' is going to do with that mangy rodent ...
I've written very little in this space about the impeachment process/trial in Washington, for a couple of reasons. First, simply, writing a week ahead of time (or even a couple of days in advance) about ...
So, let's set the scene, so to speak. You have progressives hollering for bail 'reform' here locally (in conjunction with adamantly refusing to contemplate building a new jail) and across New York state. ...
I've never seen much point in making New Year's resolutions. As a long time (and very observant) friend once said of me: "If he says he's going to do it, watch out, he's going to do it." Some of her other ...
To really kick off 2020 I thought I'd pass along a quote I ran across recently that I thought was pretty insightful. On the surface, it makes perfect sense, but I think its wisdom touches a rarely considered ...
Short, sweet (perhaps), certainly speculative this week. It's too soon to jump back into politics as we lurch into a new year. "...Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...". I have discovered, in talking ...
It's one of those 'in between' times, in a few ways. I write this just prior to Christmas Day, and you'll read this between that holiday and New Year's. The kids are off a full two weeks (who thought ...
It was Christmas Eve, midnight Mass, and I think it might have been 1964, though I'm unclear on the year. I was one of the altar boys privileged to serve the midnight Mass at St. Matthews, and I do mean ...
Quick, what/who do you think is the biggest (by dollars spent) lobbying organization in the United States? I'll bet you didn't think of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, did you?? Howsabout $94.8 million ...
