Just a thought, in a long list of them …

I’m reminded of an associate at work who regularly objects to what he perceives as abuses of the English language. Just the other day I was asking him about “digital multimeters.” He corrected me — as if I were a six-year old — and said, “you mean numerical multimeters,” “No Jack,” I replied a little annoyed, “I’m talking about ‘digital’ multimeters, just as it says on the package.”

Sometimes, no matter how intelligent we wish others around us were, we just have to go with the flow… accepted usage and all… avoiding being an annoyance and even worse… no matter the cause.

Maybe things aren’t as bad as we perceive… but then again …

Comments? Questions? Observations?

D-Day – Taking the Moment

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some … stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. ~~ Gilda Radner

Hard to believe that so much time has gone by and not a word from me published in this blog for many months.  To say my life of the past year or so (or more) has been one of ups and downs would be an understatement.  And believe me… I feel tremendous guilt, even remorse that I haven’t kept up with my ideal to post regularly here.  So much to say …

But, nevertheless, a myriad of reasons have kept me away.  Ranging from personal to financial to legal… to new employment, new homes and changed surroundings; along with lost friends but new relationships, computer breakdowns, issues of health, issues of politics and even poker.  Yes poker!  All and more have conspired to keep me from writing, but enough about my “living the dream,” time to stop and smell the roses!  Better yet, time to write about the fragrance.  Taking the moment, making the best of it and not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Politicians – The Critic Doesn’t Count

I have no ambition to govern men.  It is a painful and thankless office. ~~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, December 28, 1796

Being a politician is tough.  No doubt about it.  It’s a thankless job steeped in cynicism, distrust, even vile hatred and personal attacks from the very people they’re trying to represent.  I have little regard for cynics, never have. never will!

The politician’s job requires them to be ever visible, and accountable to not only a belligerent and fickle constituency, but to a hostile and often biased press.  That makes a politician a very easy target.  I can’t imagine being one.  It’s far too high a price to pay to be under such constant scrutiny, on an unlevel playing field and unable to please everyone.  The majority of us would never allow such close inspection.  Frankly, most of us couldn’t stand the heat.  Better it is to complain, point the finger.  Nevertheless the question should be asked;  If not us, then who?

What Would the Fathers Say?

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only Law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited….What a paradise would this region be!
~~ John Adams, 1756 ~~

We call it “modern times.”  We’re up-to-date, we’re high tech.  At the cutting edge, the leading edge, smarter and brighter than ever before.  We’re enlightened!  We have the Internet, and much of the world’s knowledge right here at our fingertips. In so many ways, we are a truly blessed nation.

Some say they don’t care what the older generation thinks.  After all, what do they know?  Others quote the Founding Fathers to validate a point, usually political, while at the same time ignoring the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe those same founders wrote and spoke so much about.

Ethics in Journalism is Dead!

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth. ~~ Dorothy Thompson

Ethics in Journalism is dead my friend. You hadn’t heard?  Tragically and sadly it’s so.  There was no announcement, no obituary, no funeral, no day of mourning, no closure.  It just happened.  Ethics you see is gone, you can be sure of that.

The Fourth Estate once stood for something.  It used to be an honored profession, a free-agent, independent of outside influence.  At one time a watchdog and guardian over governments and politicians gone astray, it’s now become the opposite.  That once great institution stands now as a facilitator, a protector, an enabler.  Journalism’s hatchet men have become manipulators and endorsers of the worse that government, and the governed, has to offer.  All at the cost of ethics.  What was once revered should now be feared.  Journalists have become no less than secondary parties to a crime.  You and I, our posterity, and our country have become — many of us — its unwitting victims.

A Little Bit Country – Summer Days and Summer Nights

When I was about nine years old I spent more than a month of my summer vacation staying with one of my uncles and his family.  He and his second wife had around nine kids at home.  Most of them were hers, while three of them were theirs together.  Suffice to say, and especially from an only-child’s point of view,  there was a lot of cousins to play and have fun with.  My uncle had lost his 36-year old wife years earlier to cancer while his second wife was previously married.

The family lived in an old two-story house in the country amidst narrow dirt roads that wound past numerous farm houses, barns and outbuildings.  The house, which sat in a wooded area on several sides and had to be nearing 100 years old, was located a few miles from my birthplace in Clearfield, Pennsylvania in an area called Bailey Settlement. 

Fifty-One Years Ago Today: A Personal Memory

During my youth every kid in my Riverdale, Maryland neighborhood had a bicycle, and I was no exception.  I had lived there since I was four and all my earliest childhood memories originate there.  I’m sure I went through three or four bikes during those years, my first being a small Huffy with training wheels, and later upgrading to the most popular of them all, a Schwinn!