From mid-December through early January, choirs singing Christmas carols played on the family stereo as I waited for Santa, strung cranberries, assisted in baking ginger bread cookies, hung ornaments at random on our Christmas tree, opened presents, or hung out in my room. In high school and college, I sang arrangements of carols in styles ranging from contemporary classical to barbershop.
Shortly after my Weimaraner guide dog and I moved into a shoe-box sized New York City apartment, I attended…..
My opening remarks to Amy Coney Barrett if I were a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Thank you, Ms. Barrett, for coming to this dreary, dark chamber today. Sincere apologies for the posturing, virtue signaling, and religious snark.
Decorum dictates that we ask lawyerly questions to which you respond with lawyerly evasive gravitas. But we senators are far more interested in making you look brilliant or foolish so that we will look good to our funders and those we…..
Most people view President Trump as an impetuous bully immune to criticism, the definition of a fool in the Old Testament’s book of Proverbs. But does he qualify as a Holy Fool: the person who brusquely brays truths that many people believe, but are afraid to express in polite society?
Consider some of his statements during the 2016 presidential campaign:
The world would be safer if Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi were still in power.
Our invasion of Iraq was…..
According to the book of Proverbs, fools are trash talking bullies itching for a fight. They reject wise counsel while playing the victim.
Not cool to be a fool.
Yet Paul wrote in Verse twenty-seven of Chapter one in First Corinthians that God uses what is foolish and weak to shake the wise and strong.
Perhaps through Holy Fools.
Holy Fools play a significant role in the Russian Orthodox Church tradition. St. Basil the Blessed, for example, lived in Moscow…..
For the past four months, I have been the drummer of a recently-formed jazz trio. We call ourselves The ViolinCellulites (or Cellulites for short) because the leader plays — you guessed it — the cello. Our aim is to breathe new life into those old jazz standards.
We rehearse twice a week as my black Lab guide dog Heath sleeps in a corner, occasionally getting up to sniff for crumbs, poke the cellist’s bow with his nose, or weave between…..
In late January, 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion through the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, resulting in endless acrimony that has settled into predictable channels.
Once Roe is overturned, each state will be able to decide how they want to address abortion. Some will make it illegal; some will mandate varying degrees of restrictions; and a few will maintain the status quo.
According to friends who attended college in the 1950s and 1960s, wealthy women wanting abortions…..
President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget recently ordered all federal agencies to end sensitivity trainings that cover topics related to white privilege and critical race theory, arguing that these concepts are propaganda that divide. He later tweeted that critical race theory “was a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue.”
While this is another example of President Trump trying to persuade through bullying, most people view mandatory sensitivity training as punishment. Even the term “sensitivity” causes…..
In the Harry Potter series, Vernon Dursley, Harry Potter’s abusive uncle, was the director of Grunnings, an organization that manufactured and sold drills.
We don’t learn much about Vernon’s managerial style. In the first book of the series, J.K. Rowling wrote that he shouted at people and made many important telephone calls. At the beginning of the series’ second book, she recounted how Mr. Dursley coached his wife and son about how to flatter a business client while bullying his…..
so many enemies
Socialists and Chinese and shithole countries Antifa and immigrants Progressives and conservatives and takers Black Lives Matter and athletes and artists
So many enemies…
Pelosi and AOC and crooked Hillary and nasty women Abortionists and secular humanists and the queers Activists for the crippled and climate change wackos Muslims and cancel culturists and academic snobs— Media moguls and PC corporate chiefs.
Those upities who dare to dream While disagreeing with my stable genius.
Did you know that Nazi leaders used recommendations from Ivy League eugenicists and laws passed by southern United States politicians as the basis for their actions against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities, and others they deemed subhuman?
In Chapter Eight of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, (Random House, 2020), the author wrote about how German conservatives supported Adolf Hitler, a novice politician, thinking they could control him. She stated that the Fuhrer sold himself as…..
Breaking Barriers - Working and Loving While Blind