Beauty fades, or so they claim. It slowly melts away leaving nothing more than a bittersweet memory. While attitudes about what constitutes beauty change with the times, the belief its existence is always a temporary phenomenon remains prevalent. This mindset is fixated on the new, the young and, occasionally, the different. It often dismisses (more…)
You hear the breaking news, the latest scandal, the newest revelation and pause to once again wonder about the sense of people who run for public office. How large is someone’s ego to think those things said or done in the past will stay buried while they seek the spotlight of national attention? Worse yet, how dim is their grasp of the realities of today’s world to assume, even for a moment, any past misstep will not (more…)
We live in tough times, difficult times. Pressures crowd us with a relentless urgency that often makes it hard to distinguish between up and down, right and wrong. Our path gets riddled with doubt and the muddier it becomes the easier it is to stumble. Our struggles squeeze us so tightly that our spirit fades, our body sags. When Thomas Paine said, “These are times that try men’s souls” he could have been talking about (more…)
You can point to the post-war prosperity and social changes wrought more than a half a century ago, when the future glistened with optimism unlike any we’d ever experienced. Industry and invention streamlined everyday tasks allowing people to concern themselves with more conceptual matters, matters not tied to the business of daily survival. New attitudes were born, attitudes whose values were deeply (more…)
They live secure in our vault where everything we hold dear is ferociously guarded. We understand their importance, their irreplaceability. Make no mistake, we appreciate their value. We know this as instinctively as a hungry child reaches to suckle her mother’s breast. The way we act, what we feel, our perceptions, our jealousies and our fears all possess a direct line to them. Often we close our eyes and drift, opening the vault in search of (more…)
Today Sandy wrote about a conversation she had with a friend concerning the song she’d like to have played at her funeral. It’s an interesting thought and makes for fun, lively discussion. Unfortunately, no matter which song(s) we request be shot over the loudspeakers during our final above ground moments, we can never be absolutely sure these musical instructions will be followed. This concerns me.
It’s not as if we can’t trust those tapped to deal with our going away soiree. I’m sure they’re fine people. It’s just that mistakes can be made, even by those with (more…)
The time has come for a decision. What an exciting occasion! What a stimulating moment!
This is a moment filled with unbridled expectation and wild choices. With possibilities. What lies before us is a tableau shining with life and it winks seductively, bursting with promise and unlimited potential. We know our future is in play and we unabashedly love it.
This is a moment to weigh and understand what (more…)
Every August Beloit College publishes what they call The Mindset List. It’s a puddle of facts designed to illuminate the rest of us about things which help shape the worldview of the incoming college freshman class. (The most recent list contained such sobering thoughts as “Amazon has never been just a river in South America” and “The Communist Party has never been the official political party in Russia.”) But the list does more than that. It also shows (more…)
I first heard about Trader Joe’s 5 or 6 years ago. A store opened a solid 45 minutes north of me and was an instant success. I never bothered with it. Whenever one of the converted discovered I had never been a look of astonishment crossed their face. “You gotta go, dude! It’s amazing!” The accolades were never-ending and I thought, “All this for a food store? A food store??”
If praise is constant and consistent a moment comes when you begin to feel as if (more…)
September 2011
Today is Red’s 14th birthday. While part of me finds this incomprehensible, another larger part pretty much takes it in stride. After all how different was she this morning from yesterday? From last week? How different will she be tomorrow? Hardly at all, yet the changes occurring in her all the time are profound and everlasting. As they are in all of us.
Change is a funny thing, isn’t it? Its movements are so stealth that we never notice them as they occur. When you looked in the mirror this morning you saw (more…)
Trask Avenue 