Early last evening I was watching my usual news program and a guest was talking about how New York Legislature was about to pass a law authorizing same sex marriage in the state of New York. I’ve been around political decision making for long enough, and closely enough, to question the judgment of a premature […]
Last night I watched President Obama’s thirteen minute address to the nation on Afghanistan. I felt it was a thoughtful speech, and it takes no long leap to state that every word, every inflection, everything, was very, very carefully put together for presentation to a diverse and immense world-wide audience including friends and enemies alike. […]
* June 17, in this space, I related a dream about a 2:43 speech. Here’s my version of that speech, considerably shorter than two minutes. “Speak your truth to others, particularly those who may disagree with you. Listen. Learn. Participate. Keep open the possibility that there may be flaws in what you believe to be […]
UPDATE/SUPPLEMENT June 19, 2011, here. As we all do, I dream, and I just awoke from a dream whose essential message I remember. This doesn’t always happen. I want to share the dream, and speculate from whence it came. For some reason I found myself as king# of the world, only for a few minutes, […]
under construction
This mornings New York Times (NYT) had an interesting article about a St. Paul area business man reluctant to hire workers. A couple of days earlier the Minneapolis Star Tribune had an equally interesting column by a long time very prominent business executive essentially rebutting the oft-repeated and false argument of conservatives that taxes will […]
In two years and 381 blog posts, I can think of only one other posting in which I emphasized a single piece of writing I had seen elsewhere. Today is the second. I’d highly recommend a reading of this lengthy item, “The fascinating story of how shameless right-wing lies came to rule our politics” by […]
June 3, 1990, was a chilly, somewhat blustery and threatening rain day in Minnesota. It was also the day that USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, came to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit. It was a ‘coup’ of sorts for we in the hinterlands of the U.S., as outlined in […]
This afternoon I happened across a marvelous video made by folks in Grand Rapids MI, supposedly one of the ten most dying cities in America. You can watch and read about it here. It is 10 minutes of sheer in-your-face optimism in the face of being ridiculed as a loser. We can all use a […]
Today I will probably attend a Memorial Day observance sponsored by Veterans for Peace near the Minnesota State Capitol; I’ll wear the Buddy Poppy purchased at Hibbing from a VFW member on May 13, and a Forget-me-not purchased from a Disabled American Veteran here in Woodbury a couple of days ago. Yesterday I drove over […]