Six years ago in another venue, I made a list of what I thought were the 10 greatest moments in American history. Looking back, I decided there were two others that needed to be mentioned, but I didn’t want to remove any of the original ones. So I dropped my original No. 10 to 12th …
A few years back, the archconservative organization known as Focus on the Family was circulating a five-question survey in an effort to become relevant to more people in the 21st century. Some of you may have seen this at the time, but I thought it might be interesting to print the five questions along with …
“We can never get Dad to do anything. As soon as he gets home from work, he’s playing video games … or posting on Facebook … or downloading porn.” Those are things you never heard in my house when I was growing up, and not just because there were no video games, Facebook or downloadable …
Freedom. Thomas Jefferson said it was about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The National Rifle Association says it’s about the right to own guns. Kris Kristofferson said it was just another word for nothing left to lose. What exactly does freedom mean to us in this the third decade of the 21st century? …
Back in the day when I was a newspaper columnist, there was nothing I could write that stirred the crazies up more than suggesting we no longer lived on a frontier and that there ought to be legitimate restrictions on gun ownership. All these years later, it’s getting worse all the time. I wrote this …
Middle class … or working class? Back in the first decade of the century, when I was working in Southern California, I attended a conference for media covering business entitled “The Middle Class on Life Support.” Its premise was that it was becoming impossible in many parts of California to live a middle-class lifestyle — …
Farmers have known for a long time that you should never ever eat your seed corn. When the food starts to run out, when hunger pangs get stronger, there is a temptation to reach back into the pantry and start eating the corn that was held back to plant in the spring for the next …
Why on Earth do we still use fireworks to celebrate anything, let alone the Fourth of July? Are we that selfish … or just that clueless? Once was a time — in the not-so-distant past, I suppose — that hearing loud noises in the sky and seeing large displays of various colors gave us a …
“Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers, the next you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.” Most of us lead three lives. There’s the first one, the one described in the above quote from “The Wonder Years,” although it’s more than memories that stay …
In the course of nearly 25 years of school, I managed to come across some teachers with some odd gimmicks. In the mid ’70s, when I was trying to get my mojo back taking some junior college courses, I signed up for Sociology 101 and met a teacher who gave the final exam on the …
