View From Here

At my age I don’t need a lot of things. Groceries, certainly, drugstore items, too, cleaning products and an occasional personal product like a men’s shaver. Books I read on my Kindle. Movies are watched on TV. Gasoline I get at the normal place. Clothing is infrequent and basic. I shop at Target for men’s wear, but sizes are a problem for me. I take 3-extra-large for most everything. Pants need an inseam and waist measurement. I’m not good at that so   just go to a store with personnel support. Shirts are easy. With limited mobility, I use a cane to enter target and use one of their electric carts. Then I mosey around the big box store to my heart’s content. Until, that is, content becomes ill content. Most large sizes seem to be carried by Target only over their online store. But if given that choice, I simply use Amazon for the cheapest price. Groceries I do weekly and meagerly. I get Factor prepared meals, 4 of them per week. That keeps shopping at a minimum. I also ge...

So Much to Read : The Internet is a repository of newspapers, magazines, articles galore, research reports, novels, plays and short stories. Life is a wealth of reading opportunities. We can read print novels, write and read letters to friends and family, and keep up with the news in many ways. All of this is connected with reading. Everywhere I turn I am expected to read the material. By the end of the day I’m exhausted and resistant to reading one more sentence. I’d rather nap or watch a simple TV program that does not require serious thinking. A relief from reading becomes a serious goal. Bored or Not : In retirement I have a lot of time. I fill it with tasks I find enjoyable. Coaching others is fun for me, analyzing their business or organization problems and suggesting solutions is creative and pleasing. Writing a blog is another creative use of time, and very enjoyable to me. I like writing. I like exercising the mind and discovering new meanings and relationships of disparate ...

Oil prices by the barrel have been edging down for 3 weeks. The slide continues. But gas pumps in Illinois are pushing prices higher. The industry claims a power failure to a Joliet refinery are the cause of the price pressure. Not very likely, says I. In the past, price volatility for gasoline in metro Chicago has been prevalent. The pattern, however, is almost always up. Always a reason to raise prices. Rarely a reason to lower them. But here’s the thing today, July 26, 2024, prices for a barrel of oil are sliding downward and that reality should be driving pump prices lower as well. A hiccup in Vietnam or China causes gas price movement in the world and Chicago. A downward price of oil raises the gas price in Chicago? And caused by power failures caused by recent storms in a lone refinery in Joliet? Someone in the oil industry needs to do their homework and be straight with the public. If the oil industry thinks it is solely in control of their pricing, they need to think agai...

Yesterday, July 23 rd , was the first anniversary of Rocky’s death. Yesterday. It does not seem possible that a whole year has passed since that awful day. But it has, and quickly, too. The grieving process is many things: not always a storm of emotions, rather a time of deep thought on many things, some of them the simplest in all of life. Why that is poses other questions and deep thought. Friday’s blog on Unfinished business is only one of them. Aloneness is another one. Shared thoughts and reactions to shared events is another. Daily teasing opportunities gone, vanished. The source of humor and much laughter is missed. Simple togetherness is yet another. Being in the same room with another human being, one you don’t have to wonder understanding you, is a huge miss. Sharing a meal together is another. Probably the biggest loss, is the silent hug, the acknowledging glance or smile. A life shared is the core of these feelings. The absence is a giant hollow. No echoes here. Jus...

With Joe Biden’s dropping from the presidential campaign, the winners are complainers, poor succession planners, and the Trump campaign. The time to have not selected Joe was back at the beginning of the process to name a candidate for 2024. Old people are good people, experienced and wise. But they do not necessarily have the stamina to last through the terrific strains and effort of both a campaign and an administration of 4 years. Joe has done very well so far, but as a candidate he was flawed, not by him, but a political party that refuses to plan an orderly succession of leadership for the party and the nation. The same is true for republicans, but they have yet to learn this lesson. One day they will. Hopefully it will be this campaign. After all, Trump is past 78 and aging badly. His temperament is out of control, his memory is faulty, he doesn’t understand complex matters of government and international relations, and he simply cannot tell the truth. And yet, they made the wh...

So much to do. Daily tasks. Bucket list, too. Good intentions figure, too. Business done. Business unfinished. I’ve been struggling with this for a while now. As the first anniversary of Rocky’s death approaches, I become more and more aware of the things we hoped to do but didn’t. The road trips dreamed about, some even planned. Illness does that; it interrupts bucket lists. I thought of other unfinished business. I guess it rekindles at bedtime. An empty bed. No accompanying wheezes or snorts. No rustling about on the mattress. Just silence. Stillness. Something not done. Just nothing. Mealtimes, too. Breakfasts are very quiet these days. No hustle and bustle. The oatmeal is missed. I haven’t brought myself to learning how to do that simple task yet. A year without hot oatmeal! Now a bygone staple. Movies to watch on TV is a finished task. We avoided each other’s go to titles; our tastes were that far apart. No sci fi for me; his favorite! No romance movies; my favorite. And ...

I was a tireless political junkie in my teens. I read copiously of political ideology and the minute, intellectual arguments on many issues. In those days, 1960/61, I was very conservative. I wrote about my thoughts on these issues. I expanded those thoughts. I spoke about them. Those groups did not agree with me, nor did many others. I survived that separatism and took it with me to college. At college I dove into Republican party politics. My conservatism in 1961 served me well, but I struggled with the intellectual threads more and more. And then it happened: I began a class in Economics 101. I felt certain I would learn all about the ins and outs of the economy and how it worked. To me, economics was intrinsically embedded in political thought. It was, after all, the system that fueled the American dream and constitutional government. Boy was I wrong! Instead, I learned how capitalism worked, how it was supposed to work, but how it became saddled with a lot of political interfe...

Mid-month, the Ides of. Reached so quickly, two weeks have passed plus one day. Shocking passage of time, the speed of it. A few years back I was in my 20’s and 30’s. I still feel those days despite the intervening decades. I know I’m not alone in this. Just about everyone I talk to agrees that time speeds faster with age. What does this tell us? Of what value is this sensation? Indeed, is it fact? Or merely an impression? I have heard people say they wanted to live until the day they see their granddaughter marry. But then, they want to be present to know the first baby of the granddaughter. And then it is a grandson’s wedding they want to see, and then experience yet another new generation's birth. I get it. I really do. I’m as guilty of these feelings and statements as other people. Trouble is that those events do come to pass. Twenty years flies by and the newborn is suddenly a college graduate, a career beginner, and maybe a bride to be in short order. Still other gr...

This blog is my tool for mental health. Originally, the blog was written so I could dump big ideas of a national or international nature. Why? Because at the time I was the managing editor of a local, weekly newspaper. The more I wrote, the more I pulled together themes, articles and writers of all that, the more I was attracted to sharing more of my ideas. That was a problem. Local news may have connectors to regional, state-wide and national issues, but they are not in the main. The two are separate and need to be kept separate. So, I wrote the blog to keep the small-town newspaper focused on the immediate community. The strategy worked. The paper stayed on point and purpose. The blog, now 12+ years later, has posted over 3 million words. Much of those words are philosophical, political, issue oriented and emotional. Personal and emotional. Frustrations and emotions. How can I and you live in a political environment of today’s nature, without feeling emotional, frightened, and fr...

Current politics are personal to me. For many reasons. First, I am a guy. I have an ex-wife, a daughter, two granddaughters, a daughter-in-law, and a sister. I have had a mother, grandmothers, and aunts. I care about their freedom to make their own decisions. That includes abortions and other gender related health issues. It is their pursuit of happiness and wellness that is central to their own debate. Not mine. My role is to support them and help maintain the system of government that protects them and their rights. Second, I am gay. This has not been an easy issue to live with. I did not choose to be gay. I was born this way. My job was to know it, understand it, and live with it. None of those things are in a written manual. I did not know what to do, nor where to turn for advice and counsel. None. I lived life the best I could. The struggle informed me of options. Those developed over the course of a few decades. I did not become an independent gay man until the age of 50. Sev...

The US Constitution gives all citizens the right to vote and many other rights, freedoms and obligations. Lately, the Supreme Court has been taking many of those rights, freedoms and obligations away from the American People. This is wrong. The Supreme Court has overspent its authority. Who says so? We the people. That’s who. Somehow the three federal branches of government – Executive, Legislative and Judicial – forgot the central precis of the American Way of Life. We the people dictate what is to be and what is. There are the three branches of government that appear to assume the responsibility, but they really do not have it unless we the people say it is so. What does this mean? Here are a few takeaways from George. 1.  The Legislative Branch has underperformed its function and authority for many decades now. In real ways the branch has abdicated its authority. Because we the people elect representatives to this branch, we are the people with the power. If the elected repr...

Managing tasks, programs and longstanding operations of any organization, takes constancy and continuity. Routines help people do their jobs consistently and accurately. Mistakes are made and repairs accomplished. Routine operations day after day. Mistakes made day after day. Fixes made day after day. For the most part operations are continuous and perform well. There are exceptions. Always are. You’ve made mistakes and gone the extra mile to repair the damage. Same in governing the peoples’ business. Government involves innumerable transactions. Taken together they represent the hoped for objective of the program or function of the government. The military is enormous. Several branches, each with its specialty in land, air, water and outer space. Millions of personnel, countless tools of war – defensive and offensive – and organizational structure. This is a human enterprise. Think of higher education, too. It is often state owned and public. Many of the programs at such instituti...

A couple times in recent months, an email appeared that surprised me. Each reported a renewal payment for a service. I didn’t recall such payments were due then. I found a phone number on the email to call if I had questions. I did and called the number.  I reported my wish to cancel the transaction. So far, so good. I was asked to take action for the request to happen. I did what they asked. Then the process seemed to slow down, and I wondered why. I also wondered if the transaction was legitimate. That pondering led me to the conclusion that I was in the midst of a possible fraud. I questioned the people I was dealing with over the phone. In the past all requests to cancel anything was verbal and they proved they had done as asked. The two instances referred to in this post were different. The calls turned into arduous, long delays, all after I had performed an action that seemed odd to me. In the first case I hung up the call. That worked instantly. No fraud was committed. ...