Let me begin by saying I am not a genius. The illustration that begins this post is from the New York Times’ Spelling Bee game, one of the mre challenging and fascinating word games I have found on the Internet. One of the first things I do every day is Spelling Bee. It serves to …
From my Latino days. Not really, but this photo is one of the more unique ones anyone ever took of me. It was almost exactly half a lifetime ago, taken in December 1985, just after I had turned 36. It was the year of my first really successful diet. Starting at the beginning of May, …
“Suppose the streets were all on fire, the flames like tempers leaping higher. Suppose you’d lived there all your life, do you think that you would mind?” The above quote is a song lyric from 1968, from another summer of inner city rioting. The song was by Spanky and Our Gang, who had previously had …
LIFE IS TOUGH ENOUGH WITHOUT DEMONIZING THE POOR Read More »
Everyone has their favorite Christmas movies, even if too many people call something a Christmas movie just because it takes place in late December. “Die Hard” and “Die Hard 2” take place at Christmas, but neither one is about Christmas. Pretty much the same with “Home Alone.” And so many of the more recent ones …
‘LOVE ACTUALLY’ DEFINITELY MY FAVORITE CHRISTMAS MOVIE Read More »
It’s time to stop allowing the haters to set the terms of the debate. Republicans are trying to make it more difficult for people who don’t vote their way — particularly minorities — to vote at all. Particularly in Southern states, the goal is to repress African-American voting, because they are the group that votes …
When I was in my early teens, I wasn’t nearly as interested in World War II as I could have been. Correct that — should have been. My dad was a veteran infantryman in the Army and my birth father was a sonarman in the Navy. Both were young veterans. Norman Rappaport was 19 when …
It was 50 years ago this coming April. For some reason, I was writing a great deal of poetry in 1972 and ’73. They were two pretty depressing years in my life. My first real love relationship had ended in late 1970, and until I started dating the woman who would become my first wife …
A BRIEF GLANCE FROM AGE 72 to a 22-YEAR-OLD IN 1972 Read More »
When we decided to retire and move away from California, my wife had one priority. She didn’t want to live anywhere there was a good chance we would be hit by natural disasters — earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding … oh, and tornadoes. When we settled on Georgia south of Atlanta, we knew it wasn’t earthquake country. …
I don’t know how long it has been that I’ve been collecting music on iTunes to play on my computer or various portable devices. At least 15 years or so. I have what I guess was the biggest iPod, with a 160 gigabyte hard drive that seems to hold more than 20,000 songs and comedy …
MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC that takes up very little space Read More »
I did not write this myself. Someone posted it on Facebook three years ago. Someone posted it and invited people to add their name at the end if they agreed. I did … and I did. The only thing that’s a little bit dated is the references to TFG, who was president then. With jailbait-chaser …
