Regular readers know that I'm a fan of Donald Trump--as an entertainer. As a politician? Not so much. In fact, not at all. The Donald is very big on platitudes and reassurances, but quite short on specifics and plans. In fact, he has none. "We can fix it!" he claims over and over. But there's no . . .
To mount a Presidential campaign these days, you need just two people: a candidate and a wealthy donor. Or, in Trump’s case, just one: he is his own billionaire. And he is the unadorned face of American politics. ~Amy Davidson writing in the New Yorker While the first Republican debate . . .
Somehow, M's alum group in San Francisco found him and sent a mailer for an unusual event. It was a screening of a film in which one of the last Auschwitz survivors walked the camp with two teen girls who were about the age she was when her family was taken to the camp. Her name was Kitty . . .
When newscaster Walter Cronkite brought the sound and fury of the Vietnam War into our living rooms it marked the evolution of the news and mass media, confirmation that we had become, in fact, a global village. Since then we've had a ringside seat to events we can never un-see. Events so horrific . . .
Watching the CNN series on The Sixties, I wasn't surprised that an entire two-hour episode was devoted to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I've seen so many programs on this in the 50+ years since. But this time, I watched it through a different cultural lens. One thing that struck . . .
Pray for Peace I must interrupt regularly scheduled programming because the world has gone mad once again and terrorists of all flavors are running rampant, many in the name of religion. Children are being beheaded. People are being buried alive. These barbarous acts are worse than we can . . .
If you've been following my blog you know that I've become less and less tolerant of the violence in our world. I'm tired of people dying from violent crime. Kids, cops, bystanders--all people. We live in a culture of violence and we're reaping exactly what we have sown. If you're a Facebook . . .
Why didn't I know about the film, The Constant Gardener (2005) before now? I happened to catch it on cable and was blown away by how good it was and that I'd somehow missed it back in that day. John LeCarre, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based, always has an interesting take on . . .
I wrote this months ago, before BART went on strike. BART is a "rapid transit" train that many people in the San Francisco Bay area take to work. But not near enough, because it doesn't go into Silicon Valley, a major work center for the millions of people who live in the greater Bay area. Despite . . .
Paula Deen's on the hot seat this week, with just about everyone excoriating her for racist statements. Someone foolishly booked her on the Today show. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, realizing she'd do herself no good at all, and she cancelled--there is no way for anyone to talk their way out . . .
