I’m not religious. However, I am a theist. That means I believe in a deity who cares about us and helps us endure the vicissitudes of life. If you’re not a theist, I don’t think any less of you. This is something we all have to decide for ourselves. I would never try to convince…
Listen only to yourself
February 5, 2014
Yesterday I saw a video about two close friends named Erik Fitzgerald and Matt Swatzell. Actually, I watched only part of the video. I knew the second it started what it would be about: One man killed a loved one of the other man, and now the two are friends. And that’s precisely the story….
An age of wonderment
February 1, 2014
Scott Thunes is in the hospital. His situation isn’t to be minimized. However, he picked one of the best times in history to have a significant health issue. We live in an age of wonderment. In the last two decades, the global poverty rate had been cut in half. It appears that the trend will…
The stinging pebbles of virtue
January 18, 2014
I just read an article about how the Saudi Mutawaa (religious police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) have banned women from using swing sets. The rationale is that the police are protecting the women from any men who might see them and get excited. Thus, Saudi culture not…
One size never fits all
January 4, 2014
Every time I turn around, someone is telling me I should adopt their mindset. I don’t know what it is about public exposure, but it immediately makes people start lecturing others on what to think. Is it the need to control? I never understood that particular urge. My father was so controlling that he’d stick…
I AM sorry but go away
December 28, 2013
August 20, 2012, was not a good day. I learned that someone was not at all who I thought. It was genuinely horrifying because I discovered that I’d been dealing with an insane person. She’d hid her insanity relatively well, but as always, I denied the little signs that things were awry. In August of…
Thirty-three years and counting
December 27, 2013
My friend Joe Cady dropped in for a visit today. In Ghosts and Ballyhoo, he’s The Punk Who Set Me on My Course (pages 17 to 20). Unfortunately, I’d set my camera to take time exposures or something, so all the images of Joe in Tim’s house came out blurry and yellow. Here’s the best…
A gift from the boogeyman
December 25, 2013
One of the scariest people I ever knew was a man I’ll call “Miguel,” who lived across the street from us. He was a former gang member who looked and sounded exactly like the actor Danny Trejo. Miguel was married and had three children. He was a mechanic and truck driver, and he suffered from…
The first Christmas without Mom and Dad
December 24, 2013
This is the first Christmas without Mom and Dad. What I feel mostly is strangeness. When you get to be old yourself—I’m fifty-one—it’s incredibly bizarre to no longer have access to people who were there your whole life. Dad’s dying process was so sudden, unnecessary, and ghastly that when he finally passed away, it was…