I just finished a book, “The Lost Airman,” that made we want to cry out for some kind of miraculous change in the world, where people would finally come to “study war no more.”
The book is a true story of Arthur Meyerowitz, who was shot down over Nazi-occupied France in 1943.
Although the story is factual it reads like a masterful tale spun by an author adept at keeping a reader on the edge of his seat. [Read more…]
I’m thinking that our present times aren’t serving our children well. I mean, as I look at what’s going on in our society it seems as though we are all caught up in an atmosphere of lunacy wherein we have pretty much thrown our hands in the air like we just don’t care and kissed our way of life goodbye.
The saddest part of all this to me is our children are watching our madness, as only they know how: closely.
And they’ve got be as confused as they can be as they observe so many “grownups” going along with the program of a real live frightening bogeyman-like human being who crash landed in our midst and evolved, like a curse in an episode of the Twilight Zone, into a candidate for the highest office in our land. [Read more…]
Looking at an autumn scene, with trees changing colors, overlooking a lake of cold water, signifying the last season of a year, I thought of how I’m in the autumn of my years.
And from that I couldn’t help but think about the Class of ’56 of Tucson High, people whom I hold dear, old “Badgers” celebrating a time when we were classmates 60 years ago.
Our hair, like the leaves in the picture of the trees, has thinned and its color has changed as has a host of other things. [Read more…]
Soon the new National Museum
of African American History and Culture
will open and stand infinitely
on the National Mall
in Washington D.C. –
sharing a home
with other grand memorials
commemorating extraordinary
Americans and events
in our nation’s history,
giving “Black Lives Matter”
fresh breath,
dignifying the humanity
of kidnapped and bought people
who toiled as slaves
in cotton fields in a long ago day … [Read more…]
Oh, I remember days, just a few years ago, when memories of Nancy (my very dearly departed soulmate) would weaken me in the knees and draw heavy tears from my eyes … but thank goodness such dreary days eventually wither and die.
Now, when she comes to my mind’s eye, it’s a welcomed occasion, and she’ll usually surface at a real nice time.
Like everytime one of our grandchildren is born I can’t help but see her as a Grandma: getting little Lyric Allen or Marley Mandela or Indigo Maya (or all of them at the same time) in a headlock on the living room floor, they giggling uncontrollably; guiding them into swimmers on our Pacific shores; holding them to her breast with every ounce of the deep well of love that dwelled in her; making them pose for more photographs than should be legal; singing them silly made-up-on-the-spot ditties and songs… [Read more…]
This is so deja vu, this state of affairs with Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49’ers quarterback who sat when one is “supposed to stand” in honor of The Star Spangled Banner that heralds a time when non-white people in our county were not seen as human beings.
I fully understand and appreciate this man’s stance although I stand whenever the anthem is played out of respect for those who get goose pimples in such moments. However, I bow out at singing about “bombs bursting in air” and “flags still being there” and the empty promises inherent in the braggadocio “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave!” at the end of the song.
That aside, I can’t help but think back to the 68 Olympics, when the quest for “liberty and justice for all,” in a spirit of today’s “Black Lives Matter” movement was pursued like never before. My soul still fills with pride remembering the image of Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the ceremony for handing out the gold and the silver and the bronze medals for the men’s 200, standing on their podiums with their heads bowed and their hands raised in the “Black Power!” salute. [Read more…]
Are we ever living
in a freaked out time?
Like you got Donald Trump
running for president,
not in a cartoon, but in real time.
Then you got
folks mostly brown and black
being shot down in the street,
in fact,
by those who are licensed to “serve and protect,”
who, in effect,
don’t do either of that,
inspiring cries of “Blue Lives Matter”
and “All Lives Matter”
leaving “Black Lives Matter”
bearing the unmitigated blame
for all the shame.
It’s a new American game. [Read more…]
When I heard that there would be a “San Diego Homeless Awareness Day” my first thought was “Hooray” and then I thought about how “awareness” isn’t the problem.
I mean we know that there are folks who have no home, no place to stay, penniless, practically completely down and out.
We’ve heard over and over on the news about “rock gardens” being constructed on some streets where the homeless like to sleep; about the police destroying their encampments, places where they feel relatively safe trying to get a good night’s sleep. [Read more…]
Paris. Maria and I and her family spent 16 days there in late June, literally taken by its beauty and its charm.
I have such sweet memories of our time there:
Our cursing the five flight of stairs to our apartment every time we returned from somewhere;
All the sights, the art, the culture, the fashion, the cuisine; the Metro; the soccer madness created by the Euro-Games;
Eye-shopping in a store with prices way beyond what we could ever pay without suffering tremendous buyer’s remorse, when out of nowhere there came a little fuss and then to the left of us walked Celine Dion, taking a selfie with a woman who was way beside herself with joy, smiling at her admirers, quickly signing autographs, and leaving as gracefully as she had appeared … [Read more…]
I don’t usually run scared but it frightens me to the bone when I hear so many people say that there’s just no way they would ever vote for Hillary Clinton for president.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m voting my conscience too. But I’m doing it on behalf of children, people like my little three-year-old grandson and his contemporaries.
My vote is based on what’s in front of me as possibilities, like the possibility that Donald Trump could, in reality, become the president and set the tone for how things are going to be in a society wherein my grandson is going to learn about his world. Well that’s terrifying to me – especially considering my 78 years of struggles in this country. [Read more…]
Maria and I just spent 38 days in Europe with a stop in Philly on the way home, a vacation that had a combination of both joy and misery and ended with notions of hope.
It began with a man driving us from the Madrid-Barajas Airport to our hotel, talking about politics all the while. He wanted us to know that Spaniards, as we Americans do, have a few Donald Trumps around town. He had a lot to say about our president, a man he admired “for how he stepped up and got the U.S. out of the recession.” He finished his praise with “Great man, that Obama.”
All that made us feel very welcomed and eager to explore the city. As soon as we got our luggage in the room we strolled along streets and plazas built a very long time ago, and dined on the tastiest of tapas. We got a good nights sleep and got up the next morning in an easygoing mood, ready to take in as much as we could.
Then came Orlando, news that weakened our knees. [Read more…]
I’ve been thinking about my man, Muhammad Ali, off and on, feeling sad that he’s gone. But as a contemporary of mine (he was four years younger than me) he’ll never be forgotten by me because he has meant the world to me.
When I first heard about him he had just fought his way to a gold medal as the Light Heavy Weight Boxing Champion in 1960 at the Olympic Games in Rome.
I had just graduated from Arizona with a degree in P.E. and all kinds of basketball scoring records. So he and I were two young black men, athletes, standing tall and all. Who knew, though, that he would take being a sports figure to levels that were, up to then, unseen. [Read more…]
