In a couple of hours President Obama will deliver an important address on Afghanistan at The U.S. Military Academy at West Point NY. As is usual with these kinds of addresses, every body on every side knows everything about what is going to be said tonight, and is already, and will continue, to interpret what […]
Today at my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Fr. Tim Power chose to frame his sermon around a story told by a guy I’d never heard of: a famed hair stylist and entrepreneur named David Wagner. Fr. Tim told us that Wagner once recalled a phone call from one of his clients. […]
Last week I had two opportunities to listen to a motivated lady, Margaret Trost, head of WhatIf? Foundation, a U.S. non-profit dedicated to the possibility that some hungry children in Haiti might have at least one good meal a week. Margaret was inspired nearly ten years ago when she made her first trip to Haiti, […]
Saturday night the U.S. Senate voted 60-39 to avoid filibuster on the Health Care Reform Issue. Every Republican voted “no”. The realistic expectation from here on out is that the Republican mantra will be to make sure Health Care Reform fails; indeed, that anything that the Democrats and/or President Obama wants will fail. It’s a […]
Monday and Tuesday I took a trip out to ND to give my Uncle a little help at the farm near Berlin; the place where Mom grew up ‘way back when’. The hardest part of the work is the drive back and forth, though there was some heavy lifting that needs two people. This time […]
Yesterday my Uncle Vince and I were driving down a country road* near his farm, and and out of the blue he said, “tomorrow must be Armistice Day, right?” Right, indeed. I was surprised to hear him call it Armistice Day, since in the U.S. it’s been called Veteran’s Day since 1954, when an act […]
Note: Anneliese Solch, later to become Annelee Woodstrom, grew up in the small community of Mitterteich in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. She was 7 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was drawn to the exciting things that might be available to her if she became part of the Hitler Youth. Her parents […]
I live in an affluent community. There is no “other side of the tracks” unless one counts a few Habitat for Humanity houses not far from here, or some lower income apartments. This is a well educated place, full of professional types. My community is one of several who are part of our local school […]
Recently, I’ve read several articles, research based, on the truly dangerous behavior of humans: denying reality. The long and short: we live in a society where we believe what we want to believe…and most of us are in a position, at least for the moment, where we can get away with it. Climate Change? No […]
Last week I was invited to one of those events that have hard and fast ground rules. In this one, a prominent speaker speaks; the condition the listeners are asked to accept is to not breach confidentiality. In some senses it is a very reasonable rule: a person would like some reasonable chance to be […]