The Real McCain

According to the RealAge Test, John McCain is only 64.  And yet this is the man who, in November, 1982 began a remarkable career of public service, winning election to the United States House of Representatives where he served two terms before being elected to the Senate in 1988, where he has a history of [...]

Back to the Future: The Grownup Club

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in – Deepak Chopra
When I was a child I thought grownups knew everything, they just weren’t telling. I also thought that when I grew up, I too would know everything. For that reason I looked forward to someday belonging to the [...]

Obama and Clinton: Dancing Around the Mulberry Bush

Does America owe Barack Obama the presidency because he’s black? This was the question that seemed to speak from the television screen as I watched the heartrending story on CNN of the murder, forty years ago, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a man who spoke to all oppressed people everywhere.
Will electing a black president [...]

Appalachian Rhapsody–God’s Comic Intervention

Out of the void of darkness came the Big Boom and another mountaintop in Appalachia tumbled down the mountainside, buried a graveyard, filled up a stream and killed a fish. The fish asked why but nobody answered. A small boy heard and looked up at the old man sitting on a cloud, coughing and waving [...]

A Message From RFK: Fear Not the Path of Truth

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed. – Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1964
A thought keeps running through my mind like a moving line across [...]

The Human Condition: Poop Has Always Been With Us

Woe am I, the haunted, beset by fates unkind; blessed with a royal demeanor and cursed with a common behind – the human complaint
Not long after my first husband and I were married we found we both liked to read in bed. One night he was reading a history about ancient Rome and I was [...]

New Year Grandma with a Tic in My Eye

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better person. – Benjamin Franklin
I’m still trying to come up with a New Year’s Resolution by December 31st that won’t finish wiping me out. The ones I made last year turned me into a gum-smacking grandma with [...]

The View From the Crypt

Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines, it’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mines – Miner’s song
I’m trying to find my sense of humor. I seem to lose it this time of year but I know it’s around here someplace, probably in the passage in my brain known as [...]

Peeing on the Flowers

This morning as I was taking Winston for his walk around the block I was thinking (as I usually do while I walk Winston) about all the things I’ve been thinking about. Or, let’s face it, all the things I’ve been obsessing about, and suddenly it all struck me as hilariously funny. I could hardly [...]