As year’s end approaches this week it is time to reflect on not only this year which will soon be gone but all others in which we have lived and experienced being human. My final entry in my 2015 CE personal journal will be made on New Year’s Eve and will mark the end of Volume 41…
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Looking back on a watershed moment
What did you do in your youth? How did you spend your young adult years? When did you know you were finally a grown-up? What changed in you to validate the fact you were over that big hump, never to return to being a child? Three and a half decades ago this evening I confronted…
Continue ReadingRefugees: a personal testimony
I was going to save this particular subject for an upcoming anniversary of a proud moment and defining event in my own life. However, because of all the media-facilitated scaremongering by political demagogues and aspiring Presidential candidates, I simply could no longer wait. I think that what is being broadcast by the media sound chamber is as fundamentally wrong as it is offensively irritating. Am I out of line to wish…
Continue ReadingThe VP visits the Mother Road’s most conservative stretch
I remember the last time I was at a venue which was inundated with Secret Service agents. It was April 1991 and the location was the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD. I was in Phase I of my nurse anesthesia training and my class was in the process of getting our ACLS certifications renewed. It…
Continue ReadingThe 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month
Ninety-seven years ago this morning Paris, France time the guns on the Western Front of the Great War fell silent. Though the official end of hostilities came with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28th, 1919, all fighting between the Allied Powers and Imperial Germany ceased with the armistice declared at the…
Continue ReadingSteeped in the privilege of the loyalty oath
Anyone in the over 40 demographic who pays attention to politics likely still has vivid memories of the 2004 Presidential campaign. That particular year holds a special significance for Yours Truly as that was when I actually got down off the fence and chose sides by joining a political party for the first time in…
Continue ReadingThe decline of the fourth estate
It has been another exciting week along this the most conservative stretch of Old Route 66. One historic date that passed nearly unnoticed was the 228th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution which was Thursday, September 17th. I realize I refer to the Constitution often as so many topics I write about somehow relate to…
Continue ReadingHonoring the generators of all wealth
History tends to be cyclical. It is true that the more things change the more they stay the same. Of the issues which confronted the nation’s working people one hundred years ago, many still are relevant despite the many times the World has turned over since. One hundred years ago the fight for the rights…
Continue ReadingThe legacy of absolute victory
It was on this day seventy years ago aboard the Seventh Fleet flag ship USS Missouri (BB-63) at anchor in Tokyo Bay that the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific Theater, General Douglas MacArthur, directed the diplomatic representatives of the Empire of Japan to sign the official instrument of surrender. This event marked the…
Continue ReadingWill’s eternal influence
I don’t believe I have ever mentioned on this blog that the other moniker for Old Route 66 the Mother Road is the Will Rogers Memorial Highway. You know you’ve earned a permanent place in the heart and soul of the nation when the Congress of the United States adjourns in your honor on the day…
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