I am out of the memoir mode for the moment. I happened to see this quote from Mohandas Gandhi in A.Word.A.Day today: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948). Given the experience of my last few years, and the insight I have gained into some of the people [...]
Continue reading...Friday, September 25, 2009
In 1968, my junior year in high school, George Wallace took part in the presidential election as a third-party candidate. He took several southern states in that election, and living in Atlanta at the time, one saw his campaign posters all over town. This sort of inflamed my nascent political passions and those of my [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, August 16, 2009
Transferring schools is something I did quite frequently growing up. I attended seven different elementary schools, in fact. Transferring schools, especially at mid-year, can be disorienting under the best of circumstances. They all have different rules and punishments, all have different things and people to be sought out and avoided. It can take quite some [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, August 13, 2009
Kindergarten was a catch-as-catch-can affair in mid 20th century Atlanta. It had not become part of the public school offerings at that point, but there were many options, most of them offered by churches as a way to glean some income from their unused space during the week. I’m told that I transitioned into kindergarten [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, August 9, 2009
While we were living in Ohio, my father arranged for workmen to come and do some kind of work in the yard near the front of the house. I was about three, so I have no idea what they were going to be doing, but I do remember my mother sitting my sister and me [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, April 19, 2009
You’re driving along. You occupy an unyielding metal vehicle weighing a ton, more or less. You overtake a bicycle rider. You have a stripe of paint on the road to your left. You have a human being riding a bicycle on your right. What kind of mind can’t decide which of these [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The translation here, 21st century style, is, “I know I did something to inconvenience you, but I don’t really want to have an unpleasant exchange with you, and I certainly don’t want to change my behavior in any way, either, so I am saying this meaningless thing I learned in elementary school so you’ll go [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, December 27, 2008
Speaking of that whole keep-up-with-the-traffic thing, one situation really screams out for it. Think of the last time you found yourself at the end of a long line of cars at a stop light. Didn’t you wish everybody would just go when the light turned green–I mean, hurry, even? Typically, the drivers at the front [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, December 7, 2008
There is something that approximately one in five of you could do for the rest of us, something that seems quite easy, and why wouldn’t you want to do something easy that helped many other people? It really would entail no downside for you at all. It’s simply a matter of keeping up with traffic, [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, November 20, 2008
[Edit: Dang, I missed the 19th by eleven minutes! Oh, well.] Today is a memorable day in human history, we’re told. The World Toilet Organization has declared it National Toilet Day. The WTO (not that one, this one) seems to want to pull a straight face as they do so, though. They would remind us, [...]
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Monday, September 28, 2009
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