Radio noise is always in the background as my guide dog and I hang out in a rather large, sparsely furnished apartment. . 2016 has been a quiet, dark year with splashes of color borne through conversation, virtual gigs, music-making…and commercials.
Marketers understand that feelings, not thoughts, drive action, and one tactic they use to connect with our “feelings channel” is humor. I often find myself smiling at these humor-driven ads, but I’ve begun to notice that I often have…..
Since at least 1980, Christian end of the world experts have claimed on mainstream Christian conservative outlets that each United States president was the antichrist, the demonic power with some connection with the number 666 who will unite then trash the world until Jesus Christ’s glorious return. Jimmy Carter, because he helped negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Ronald Wilson Reagan, because each of his names contains six letters. George H. W. Bush, because of his one-world-order pronouncements……
“Peace be with you.”
“Peace to His people on earth.”
“Give peace a chance.”
“Peace to all people of good will.”
“Grant us peace.”
“Peace out!”
“Shalom.”
A perusal of the on-line Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Oxford (American English) dictionary yields the following definition of the word “peace”:
“Freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions; freedom from, or the cessation of, war or violence; freedom from dispute or dissension between individuals or groups.”
Or, to put it another…..
A minor humiliation of my piano-playing grammar school days was that clunky three-handed piano arrangement of something mysteriously called “Heart and Soul.” The girls in my class played it incessantly, which reinforced the commonly-held belief among boys that girls had cooties, whatever they were. Occasionally, an authority figure would force me to be part of this three-handed indignity, but I maintained my place with the boys by inserting notes and rhythms that didn’t belong, resulting in whiny howls from the…..
Is President-Elect (PE) Trump the second coming of Adolf Hitler?
Probably not.
Yet whenever I hear PE Trump speak, I think about how Dad and his family had to flee Dusseldorf, Germany in 1936 to escape the Holocaust. He was raised in the Lutheran Church, but his family had too much Jewish blood for those Bavarian bureaucrats.
Drawing parallels between the present and past is risky. History’s patterns call to each of us differently depending on the lessons we…..