Speed of Nature The professor packaged the question as an academic contest, the winner receiving a lollipop.  The question was, “Why does anyone want to be civilized?”  Or, phrased another way, “What does civilization promise us?”  I put on my thinking cap (which occasionally metamorphizes into a dunce cap), and I won the contest.  I really did.  My answer was this:...

Real World Senior Olympics Don’t get me wrong.  I still enjoy the Olympics.  Every four years I get charged up by watching athletes in 206 recognized nations (are the unrecognized nations participating incognito?) embrace the comraderie borne of athletic competition which supposedly transcends tribalism as they compete to win medals for their countries and prove their governments...

Part 3 Food for Thought “Can’t We All Jus’ Get Along?”Rodney King Someone once told me “thinking is having a conversation with oneself.”   A conversation I recently had with myself included sushi, a lake in Yellowstone, tether ball, snails, Frederick Douglas, oysters, handshakes, Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, not always being Caucasian, and Zen Buddhist koans.  See?  It’s all...

Food for Thought Part 2 I recently learned that the cause for incredibly lucid and scary nightmares that attack people who have Parkinson’s Disease is not the disease, necessarily, but the medications used to treat it.  (see 2017 Blog, Perchance to Dream).  So I am blaming this latest nightmare on my treatments.  Then, again, before I fell asleep I was watching some uneducated...

Food For Thought Part I “Mr. and Mrs. Maltese,” the letter began, “This is to inform you that you have seven unused days at the Freemont Park Hotel in New York City.  You must use these days before August 1st of this year.” Polley and I sat down at her Ipad and carved out a four-day getaway in New York.  On the New Jersey transit to the Big Apple, we discussed what museums to visit,...