View From Here

This November 5 th the election will place in office people from President to local dog catcher (if an elected post!). congresspeople – house of representatives and senate – plus governors, state reps and senators, mayors, county officials, and so forth. It is an awesome responsibility to vote. On the surface it looks easy, but if done well it takes work to research all the candidates and positions in order to vote intelligently. This election is clear to me at the top of the ballot. For president and vice president, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are my choice. The Trump/Vance ticket is mind bendingly wrong. The Harris/Walz ticket is for vibrant democracy, involvement, engagement and human rights on many levels. Theirs is the ticket that supports the constitution, the American heritage and way of life we have supported for most of our lives. It is a no brainer. Up and down the ballot are similar candidates who will support the constitution. Each elected official swears an oath to the...

A month to remember each year. My father-in-law claimed it was the best month because of its soft air. Soft air. A great term for temperatures that are comfortable, low humidity and soft breezes. Yes. The air is soft. In the month of October. I know of no other month that can lay claim to that factoid. And here we are on the 28 th of the month. The end of the month almost. And yet in this build up to fall and soon to follow winter, this October has been filled with daily temps in the 70’s, and a few 80’s. Very little rain. Some rain at night. Daytime weather has been kind and gentle. A lot of soft air this year. April this year was variable with growing warmth, some cold temps, lots of rain and often uncomfortable weather. May was much better. Still somewhat cool for that time of year, but a growing warmth toward summer. So, 2024 had a summer of May through October, 6 months pleasant weather. Hot spells were short and easily survived. A bunch of 80’s, but that warmth is expected...

A continuation of my last post, coming to know one is gay or straight is only one dimension to be settled. The other is how to act within the gender identity. What does one do to be gay, or straight for that matter. And no, I will not get into prurient material here. No. That is not necessary. At least I don’t think so. But hell, watch any TV drama or movie, sexual activity is apparently assumed to be necessary. Steamy scenes of actors going at it is practically in every program. Often, those scenes seem completely unnecessary. I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Ask around. I’m not alone. Neither are you. Sex is everywhere in today’s entertainment industry. Which leads me back to physical activity that expresses sexuality. How does anyone know how to act? There are no classes in this. At least there weren’t in my early years. I doubt they exist today. Oh sure, there are books, magazines, videos and a host of other efforts to ‘teach’ people about sex. But these are u...

Life is a constant stream of discovery. Coming to know the reasons for things is one thing. That’s the why. Another dimension is what. What is this thing we are dealing with? What are its dimensions, its reach, its effects? Who is yet another dimension. Who are you? Who am I. What defines the separation between you and I, them and us, and so forth? The who, what and why of life are ever present. They are bits and pieces of my life, yours, and everyone else’s. Always has been. Always will be. That is one of the facts of life we don’t think to define or wrestle with. Well, the wrestling is automatic. If we don’t know or understand something, we mess around with it until we are comfortable in its presence. That doesn’t mean we work it out and understand it, it just means we are familiar with it and accept its presence. Sort of like love. Who knows or understands love and all of its dimensions? See what I mean? In accepting the presence of something we don’t understand, we still make...

When I was a kid, we went window shopping. That entailed a stroll down a sidewalk lined with stores. We gazed at the windows and saw the goods being sold within. We were not buying, just walking and looking. It was a thing to do those days. This practice morphed into the days of malls. Teenagers know what I’m speaking of. Gather in malls, walk around to store windows, stop for a coke or a slice of pizza, continue to stroll and gather in a group at some point. Talk, mingle, become a more social being. Today, this has all changed. It was already changing when COVID arrived on the scene. With the pandemic we shifted our shopping and purchasing to online stores. Later, we fully shopped online outlets just for the entertainment value. Not the same thing as window shopping, but similar. Just a lot less social. Now, when we are interested in buying something, we research the products and features online from several sources. We compare prices and delivery options, and costs. We make an in...

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. A common core of utilities most of us enjoy these days. I remember when heat was portable, and then it was permanent but not central to the building. In warmer climates space heating was accomplished by both means. In colder climates, space heating is central to a furnace. Still much later, with heating well under control, space cooling was the problem. Window air conditioners were the thing, marveled at and considered a luxury. When installed during a wild whimsy of spending, the power bill became the focus. Air conditioning required a lot of electricity. Still does. Over the years technology managed to extract more and more heat from smaller bits of fuel, whether natural gas, coal, or electricity. And then technology improved air conditioning’s use of electricity more and more. Still costly, HVAC allows us to be comfortable no matter the climate. If you have allergies or respiratory problems, HVAC is used year-round. We do. AC is turn...

Leaves. Fall leaves. Yellow for sure, but orange, red and orange red. Startling. The tree jumps to your attention. The color vibrant, demanding even, of your attention. I didn’t grow up with fall color. I was from Southern California, and yes, we did have trees of all sorts. A lot of firs ever green throughout the year. They forested the mountains. We camped in them. Hiked in their presence as well. Sitting still in a forested glen, all alone, no one about, the silence was enormous. I swear I could hear the bark grow, squeaking and clicking as wind moved the upper regions of the very tall tree. Southern California has green-leafed trees, too, deciduous trees. They are the ones that drop leaves in fall and grow fresh ones in spring. But color? I don’t remember noticing any color other than green turning to a sort of beige, then some maybe yellowish. Certainly, no orange or red. Moving to New England introduced me to fall colors. Stunning. Massachusetts was a place of many green hi...

And time to create. Weigh ideas and possible actions. Time to ponder and value many variables. Time. Minutes, seconds. Hours and days. Writing a book is a focused task. That is the reason I haven’t written a book yet. Blogs, editorials, newsletters, reports and countless emails, yes. Those are common and constant. But each of them focuses on specific topics. Pulled from the chaos of daily living, topics pop to mind. Writing about them is easy. But a book? Yikes. What is the primary focus? That is the critical question. My life has been involved in many things. Education is one. Community organization and projects to pursue. Building community via engagement of many individuals representative of the entire community. Health, finances both individuals and organizations. Formation of small businesses, formation of small nonprofit organizations, wellness and solving challenges of those small organizations. Church work, homeowner associations, city council membership, park commissio...

The mail-in ballot arrived. I let it sit for two days, then last night I opened it, read the instructions, and voted. Sealed it in an envelop and mailed it late the next day. I’m done. I voted. I might add that I voted exactly as I had intended to do all along. In DuPage County, Illinois, a republican bastion is slipping. I voted a straight Democratic ticket. The only unknown were the judges and referenda. The latter were many. I continue to support a government of opportunity and freedom of choice. This is what I believe the US Constitution asks of us. I also continue to do what individual citizens should do, volunteer and make good things happen for the community. Government does not need to be the final arbiter or doer of good deeds. Those tasks belong to us, you and I. We are the people. The government is of by and for the people. That means, it is up to us to do our part. Letting others do it for us strips us of our moral authority. Going along with a party because we ar...

Basic elements of life. We should add fire to the list, and maybe some others, like food, shelter, safety, clothing and the like. You know, the basics. What about them? Well, we take them for granted most of the time unless there is something missing. Like not enough food, or water. Maybe clothing is up to the job we hope them to be given specific situations, and then temperatures enter the picture. Are we too warm or not enough? You see the possibilities. And of course, shelter may be too rude or rich for tastes, and fire remains a need mostly hidden in furnaces and radiators. But the need for flames to cook, to warm, to burn rubbish, to flicker before our eyes of emotions. Yes, fire is many things. But the others? Land, water and air? What do we say of them? Ah! Well, we need the land to stand upon, or sit, or do activities that matter to our wellbeing. Land that defines home, of course, and local areas common to daily life. Land upon which we grow our food, hunt animals for ou...

So often we focus on the big things. They are easy to see and become aware of. It’s the news. It’s the prevailing gossip. Whatever is going around is the easy topic to talk about. Giving the issue some depth uncovers a fuller truth of the matter. It is not so simple as it seemed. It is more complex. More issues embedded in it. Issues that matter and are key to understanding other issues. Life is not about a few sound bites. Sound bites are easy to understand. Readily accepted. Taken as truth until more is known. Soon, the speaker is reduced to bits and pieces of nothing. For example, one wonders how a major portion of a nation’s population takes its politics one way or another. We think maybe it’s the education system. If it were working perfectly, why don’t we all agree on the facts? Why would we have such diverse opinions? Well, the education system works pretty darn well. Think of the change it has witnessed and adapted to over generations. Each change creates a challenge to...

This blog has been in production since October 3, 2011. That is a full 13 years of blogging. Some periods had daily posts, that’s 7 days per week. A year or so later I took Sundays off, then posted a thought for the day on Saturdays. So, much of the time witnessed 5 posts weekly, Monday through Friday. As I begin the 14 th year, I intend to write more about the human condition, especially that of an old, gay guy. I don’t know how many of them there are, but not a lot. I suspect some of what I write will be very normal. No surprises. And then, there will be a few aha moments. I had one the other night. A friend of mine, gay, shared a pizza supper. It was the first time in years that we had the table to ourselves. Usually, one or two friends join us. Our chat included a lot of things I do not recall discussing in the past. One is unique because I have had so little experience with it. Grieving Rocky’s loss 14 months ago has been a wake-up call for me. And yet, my grieving does not...