Almost 45 years ago – it was March, 1965 – my wife and I, and her doctor, were worried that she was pregnant with our second child. This was not a selfish worry. Barbara had very serious kidney disease, and it was getting worse and worse. Pregnancy would kill her and, of course, the fetus. […]
Part I of this post appeared on October 3. We went to Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story”, on Thursday afternoon. Friday morning I sent out to my own mailing list a short message about the movie, succinctly, “See it. Not only to learn, but to be a public witness to the reach […]
The Nobel Institute website: #mce_temp_url# Twenty-four hours ago, President Barack Obama was awakened to hear an announcement that caught him by surprise: he had just been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. It did not surprise me to learn that Obama’s enemies on the radical right were up in arms about his receiving the honor. It […]
UPDATE OCTOBER 13, 2009: It is my understanding that yesterday the insurance industry rolled out its really big guns and demanded that Health Care Reform legislation require everyone to buy insurance (thus further enriching the insurance companies which are a big part of the problem to begin with. This shameless move is presumably motivated by […]
Everything that is discovered – whether an idea or a scene – that can earn a buck will be exploited and then ruined. That is the way of commerce in the unregulated capitalistic scheme of things. Only the people, through their government, can control this. And when the commercial interests themselves control the government, hope […]
UPDATE: Note book recommendation from Bob Barkley in comments section. About a year ago I wrote an Uncomfortable Essay for the Peace and Justice community entitiled “The Curse of Cooperation“. It remains on the web at #mce_temp_url#. Scroll down to Essay #5 for November 22, 2008. “Featured” in part at the Essay was the before and […]
My nephew, TJ Hedeen, died during liver transplant surgery on April 15, 2008. He was 36. He had a congenital liver defect. He was a great guy, and left behind his wife, Mickey, and two stepsons, Bryant and Brace. TJ’s death touched us all, but few as much as my son-in-law John Hagebock, a little […]
Sure, “century” is grandiose, since I’m celebrating, here, the 100th blog entry in just short of 200 days as a more or less official part of a blogosphere. (To be “official”, you just have to be foolish enough to get yourself a space on the ‘net, and then post something on your bulletin board. I […]
(As you see this film, I’d like your comments to add, here.) October 8, 2009: We saw “Capitalism: A Love Story”, this afternoon. It is well worth the time, and it’s messages will be conveyed in a later post. Even if you think that Capitalism is all there is, this film will cause you to […]
Updated at end of original post. 11:45 a.m. Friday, October 2, 2009 The bulletin came in about 10:30 a.m. CDT that Chicago was dumped from consideration for the Olympic games. It was the first of the four candidates to be thrown out of consideration for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Tokyo was next to go; […]