Year: 2021

As I was thinking and writing the blog about personal choice and freedom recently, I was hanging out with Shelby, my young Lab. She is a good sounding board for my ideas and it got me to thinking. Dogs get all sorts of vaccinations and never complain at all. Every year I take both dogs…

For a long time now, I’ve been critical of those I consider to be contrarians and poseurs who are quick to cry foul in the name of personal freedom or freedom of choice in the face of public and private efforts to confront the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Recently Paul Krugman wrote an opinion piece* entitled…

I talk to my dogs. From what I’ve seen, most people talk to their dogs. This is because we spend lots of time with our dogs and they make good confidants. They listen well and don’t say much. They are never judgmental. Above is a photo of Rucker taken right after I told him I…

Just when I was getting depressed from all the bad news everywhere, the rain has returned with a vengeance to Potlatch. Right now it is 2 pm and dark as night outside, just as it seems to be for people in Afghanistan and those among us grappling with the urgent issues of the Covid-19 pandemic…

Here is a Canadian view of the current crisis in Afghanistan. The author, David Pugliese is a journalist who covers military affairs. A DOOMED MISSION Many predicted Afghanistan failure Ottawa Citizen18 Aug 2021DAVID PUGLIESE dpugliese Last week, Global Affairs Canada officials met with Canadian military officers in Ottawa to discuss the worsening situation in Afghanistan….

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the idea of an all-volunteer military, not because of its professionalism and expertise, but because it tends to separate us as a nation from the serious nature of war itself. The debacle of recent wars and the present case of Afghanistan provide a case in point. For me the idea…

This past weekend the news turned more sour than usual. The horrific destruction wrought by an earthquake in Haiti and the disastrous unfolding of the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan have temporarily knocked the lethal surge of Covid-19 off the front page. Take your pick as to what is the worst. The first was an “act…

This cartoon struck me as being especially relevant to our politics today; like a picture, it says a thousand words. It certainly suggests the absurdity of our contemporary political discourse. Our polemics address the trivial to the exclusion of more important issues. We need to ask ourselves tough questions about our partisanship. This is especially…

After several days of entertaining out-of-town guests here at Potlatch, we joined two of our friends for a night at their cousin’s cabin on Lake Rabun, the gem of Georgia’s lakes. Part of a chain of six lakes, Lake Rabun is the oldest, dating from 1925 when it became a haven for many of Atlanta’s…

Another article from the Ottawa Citizen courtesy of George Shafer in Almonte, Ontario. By Andrew Cohen It is not new, unusual or original to consider the decline of the United States. Many have, at different times, for different reasons, since the end of the Second World War. The country emerged as the world’s lone nuclear…