It’s cold and rainy again today. Yesterday was a warm and sunny day; a tease of hope that spring is coming. This morning the news seems especially sour after the prospect of a new start under the Biden administration. It is business as usual as the media partisans and politicians return to their barricades. We…

I’m just a little bit embarrassed to be whining about the cold and hankering for spring when so many friends and others are suffering through severe cold and unprecedented winter storms. My friends in Iowa and in Canada have real reasons to complain, and now even my sister down in Texas is suffering through horrible…

As a kid growing up in Iowa, I hated rhubarb. It was everywhere in the gardens and sometimes growing wild. I thought it was weird stuff since it was sour and tasted awful. Not for me! I can’t remember where or when I first tasted a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie, but I do know…

There’s plenty of blame and shame to go around. As the oft repeated adage goes, “we get what we deserve.” Still, we might ask, how is it that so many people were duped into voting for and supporting a sociopath for president? Why is it that for more than four years the nation has suffered…

It should be apparent to those of us who keep up with politics that the historical center has increasingly come under assault from both the left and the right. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the two impeachment trials of the former president. Presently, it looks as if he will be acquitted even though…

Writing about immigration got me to thinking about the large number of Mexicans who have been migrating here before there was literally a United States. Spanish speaking people and Mexicans have been coming here since the late 16th century, long before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. After the Mexican War in 1848, there were far more…

Recently, I read an interesting article in which the writer commented that our politicians and media could make “a cultural issue of a bologna sandwich.” The words struck me as an apt expression to describe the politics of immigration from almost the founding of our republic. Shortly after Biden won and began outlining plans for…

This is the first time I have brought one of my dogs to the beach for the winter. Well, there was the case of Rucker, but that was short-lived after, as a young dog, he ate one of the palm trees. That was the exception. Since then I’ve left him in the care of the…

I cannot help myself from commenting on The Wall Street Journal again. I have been reading it faithfully every morning for almost a year now and sometimes can’t help feeling that it is part of the problem. Yes, I know this is a strong and gutsy thing to say about one of our most respected…

It is almost impossible to escape the crazy ongoing political news everyday. Unquestionably, we are all tired of hearing about the continuous turmoil brought on because of the election of Trump in 2016. Trump’s perfidy has seemingly managed to affect just about everything and threatens to corrupt the very foundations of our democracy. This week…