Our dog’s name is Beamer Oliver Walling.  He’s a beautiful 5-month-old chocolate Lab with golden brown eyes and a coat that shimmers velvet.  And as rambunctious as he is, for all of the peep and poop he’s given us, for turning our house upside down, and for leaving us with sleepless nights, we wouldn’t trade away a single moment of these memories, because we know how much we love him for what he is and what he gives to us, as we also know his love for us is more important than any promise tomorrow may hold; he lives to love us, as if today would be his last day in a life.

We are the Modern Romans of today; this is nothing to be proud of.  From dysfunctional families of all ethnicities and races to our failing institutions that find excuses to serve unfairly, we are all plagued with moral decadence.  And in case you’re wondering what this really means, it means that scarcity has become a stranger to us, because of a lifestyle of milk and honey that has run amuck without accounting for it in any responsible way; because the American work ethic is not what it once was, as food stamp programs are now the new idols to covet and emulate; and because our

Fitzhugh Lee lived his life no differently than any other Americans who found the character to fight and defend the interests of your government for the advancement of a new people in Cuba to live free.  We continue to do that today to some diluted extent in the Middle East, as well as other parts of the world.  All great countries create their legacies for posterior generations to emulate and live by proudly.  But I don’t feel the same about America today; I have my reasons to pause when considering its leadership in the world today; its progressive disregard for life as a p

Corporate business is serious because it provides the stuff from which jobs come from to put food on the table, feed your family, keep your marriage, and to some extent, it helps keep your sanity glued.

But don’t ever become a corporate person; don’t lose your sense of self-identity; don’t ever sell your soul to a company only for the sake of feeling financially secure: wake up, there’s no such thing!

If it’s about smart meters today, what will it be tomorrow?  The issue here is not so much about smart meters, although they can be a danger and an inconvenience I know, but it’s about taking away peoples’ personal choice, a choice that should be acknowledged and respected by the government and not have it swept away as if it didn’t matter.  When governments deny or overlook public concerns one too many times, that’s a cue for our leaders to have a reason to pause and think more carefully about what it does and how it does it, to the public at large.  This is how civil unrest

Whenever you deal with people, the dynamics are as interesting and fun as they are challenging and hurtful.  My father once told me, and by the way, this advice came from a man who was married to my mother for 63 years, that one of the secrets to having a long and happy marriage was to choose someone who naturally coincides with the way you are on the part of both the woman and the man.  This is not an easy thing to do in your life, but it worked well for him.  Is there something viable in that kind of advice?  Are the individual natures of how we are so important as to

Yes, I know we live in a time of fast and fat foods for sale, that medical authorities and the media are telling us the dangers of overeating on the one hand but also providing us with spectacular access to volumes of fattening foods on the other, that medicines and diets don’t always do what they promise, and that doctors with their magic scalpels and hundreds of tummy-tucks cannot surgically alter the rule that mandates the nature of the human body: too much eating without much activity leads to being overweight.  Modern medicine has not as yet realized that you cannot have your cake

Who’s getting the better bargain in this democracy of ours, the power brokers or the common folks like you and me?  Well let’s see.  On the one hand, it’s sad to know that you go to bed at night thinking that you sleep under the blanket of privileges a democracy promises, and rest under the constitutional protection that you think a bill of rights can give you.  Then you wake up the next morning to realize that much of what you once thought was true now turns out to be a compromised political illusion that remains ill-defined and lingers uncertain for many of us that once dep

Sports used to involve the simple love of the game; today, it’s a high stakes, high-stressed business that consumes every morsel of financial interest that stands in the way of club owners and financiers that bankroll them into successful seasons year after year.  But in a way, it’s really a question of values: what do you value?  A future, I’m sure, but what kind?  Will it be a kind to be short-lived, racked with injury, arthritis, and mental lapses of inadequacies that carry you with a lifetime pension, or will it be the turtle in the race with the hare, which won that race

Manners do matter, but I’m afraid it’s not really for everyone.  The arrogant as with the stubborn, the hypocrite as with the deceitful, all stupid people will never come full circle in their lives to ever appreciate the value of manners consistently.  Having said this, does this point then present a class division of some sort?  Is this discernment establishing some kind of social discrimination or classification?  Perhaps: a debatable point to discuss over dinner, maybe.  But more important, however, is the fact that society will always breed these ill-bred people