Exploring ideas

After high school I had limited contact with my parents. While I was in college in Virginia they moved to Louisiana (another story in itself). I saw them only during Christmas and summer breaks. Following my third year, I married and was permanently in Virginia, a thousand miles from their chosen final home. Traveling there…

We all play the game of “Yes – But(t)….” And we each choose which “butt” is defensible. There is a lesson here and I well remember being taught it by my father (over and over again, as a matter of fact). It was not a pleasant lesson, and I fear too few people have learned…

I think we can agree that each of us tends to judge our world based on our own “normalcy.” I always assumed I was a normal person, raised in a normal family, living a normal existence. Anything or anyone drastically outside of that understanding was “different,” bordering on “odd.” Most of us probably started out…

Someone asked me to “pick that one moment in your life you’d like to live over and over again.” Either that was a really dumb challenge, or maybe I’ve just moved so far beyond that mindset that I can’t seriously consider it. It would make more sense to ask if I remembered where I was…

I’m just asking a basic question or two, here, not judging. I thought of this after watching a reel online representing an unseen woman, possibly calling on the phone, seeking information about terminating her pregnancy at 34 weeks. She was asking about the procedure and looking for confirmation that she was not crazy or out…

Trying to be Christian is hard. I understand why so many people abandon the effort every day. Professing such a belief is not for wimps, and more and more it seems it is just about impossible to meet the criteria. The social pressure against it is palpable to all five senses. Who knew? Sadly, what…

I thought of titling this “The Jewish Problem,” but then I thought better. There is no “Jewish Problem,” but there is a broadening chasm of a “Humanity Problem.” Evil always seeks out a scapegoat, a focus against which to draw together those who are confused, in want, and who lack a star to guide them…

Paul McCartney famously asked what’s wrong with silly love songs. The question is the answer. Love is the deepest form of necessary silliness in the human soul. Some of us have spent decades wool-gathering, trying to define it and its importance. I wish I could impart to my children the absolute volcano of emotion a…

My children were flabbergasted when they found their mother was on Facebook. I don’t remember when I first logged on, but I’ve been on it for quite a number of years. You see, before FB there was something called “myspace.com” which began in 2003. Teenagers and college kids were jumping on that and posting absolutely…

He didn’t originate it, but Cloyde (my late husband) used to say, “Life without bacon… why bother?” This was always in response to whatever my latest healthy eating plan was, all of which declared bacon to be a “no-no.” In a world full of health gurus telling us everything we cannot or should not eat,…