Decisions

Aging is not all bad.  There are many positive trade offs.  First of all, as experience and knowledge are accumulated, one might hope to have a calmer more balanced way to deal with the challenges of living. Secondly, one accumulates more flexible time to engage in activities outside of work. In my case, having retired, I have taken up the brush and canvas and my imagination spurs works of art that seem to improve significantly as I practice. Thirdly,  I get to watch...... really watch my grandchildren grow up.  I get to interact and observe.  Parents don't generally have the time to do both because they are nurturing, protecting and managing their kids.  One day blends into the next and like the frames in a motion picture,  adjacent frames (days) don't reveal much change. Before you realize it, the story of childhood is over and you've missed many of the really funny parts, the tender parts, the amazing parts. As a grandparent,  you get the scenes interspersed by weeks or months and the changes are evident and the progress of becoming is apparent.
The balance is that age also requires more self maintenance.  The most important decision you make as you enjoy your latter years is how you take care of yourself.  I maintain by forcing myself (self-discipline) to exercise, lift weights, bend, and generally get active during the day. If you make the decision to become an old couch potato, there will come a day, that the couch is your bed and you can't get off it. I decide to exercise my mind as well, by crossword puzzles, scrabble games, sudoku (only 5 star), go, reading and pondering the subject of my next artwork.  Aging is unavoidable, but don't let it imprison you in a non-functional body if you can do anything about it.
Life is making decisions.  Don't avoid them.  Don't give up to divine intervention. No one stands around waiting to reroute  your life and save you.  Decide.

Questioning

What is wrong with questioning? Certainly it is encouraged in school.

The teacher wants to know if the lesson is getting across clearly. Yet many students don't question because they assume everyone else knows what the lesson is about and they don't want to appear stupid. The result for these students is ignorance. That's why teachers ask questions directed to each of the students - to assess the success of the teaching. Questions hone the mind into sharpness.

Many religions make it very clear that questioning is frowned upon if not disallowed if the "believer" is to remain within the fold. The concept is that belief questioned, is belief denied.

Liar Liar Pants on FIRE

I was never a bully in school. Nor was I ever a bully to anyone.
  In my neighborhood I was bullied when I was a small boy.  Nothing severe, nothing emotionally scarring.  But, when I was bullied, I would run to my mother and hope that she would do something about it.  No.  Instead, her advice was to take care of it myself. 
Well, it took a while to figure out what to do and sometime later when I saw my nemesis walking in back of our apartments, I walked up to him, put him in a headlock and banged his head into a garage door over and over again until I thought I had made my point.  I had, he didn't fight back (he couldn't).  He never bothered me again. Bullies never pick on people who fight back.  Bullies have a personality defect.  They feel inadequate.  They bolster their self-esteem by controlling weaker individuals.
I have never allowed myself to bullied since, although there was no shortage of would-be bullies in Junior High school.   I  have always tried to avoid fights, physical or otherwise.  My competitive nature is expressed in sports, debate, and various games.  However,  unable to avoid a fight,  I know that even at 66,  I would pummel any physical aggressor with all my being.
Now to my point - Liar Liar.   By even a subtle interpretation of the saying,  Mitt Romney should be flaming all the time.  No one forgets bullying on either side of the aggression.
Certainly not a high school kid.  He remembers the incidents vividly.  He got sick pleasure from them.  If he thinks he was a prankster, not a bully,  he  is one sick dude. He was self-righteous and felt immune from consequences for his behavior.  Perhaps he felt a sense of entitlement for his behavior.  If that is true,  it has to have dangerously warped his personality.  Don't stand to close to him, one of these days his pants will ignite.

Michelle Bachmann for President

There has to at least one woman in the Republican party smarter and more qualified to be president than either Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann. While both of these women seem to have a charisma that appears to attract the loony fringe of the Tea Party (perhaps the fringe has worked its way to the party core), both of these women are able to stay calm in the face of intelligent bombardment, both of these women can blabber on almost endlessly without actually saying anything truthful, meaningful, substantial, or even understandable at times, both of these women are simply too ignorant to head up the United States.
According to these women, the litmus test for candidacy for President is being pro American. Ms. Bachmann questions the pro and anti American positions of our congressmen and believes there should be an investigation into how pro-American our elected officials really are. Are they Communists? What might she mean by anti-American? Perhaps they are not strict constitutionalists. They lack the detailed knowledge and understanding of the Constitution that she believes she possesses. She believes in the Constitution literally as she does the bible, and questions neither the intent of the authors, the history and genesis of the document, or its ability to actually be amended.
She proudly proclaims that she is not a scientist. She's right on that one. She actually believes that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can't be a cause of global warming because "there has never be one study to show that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." Well, ask her if she would mind being in a room filled only with carbon dioxide for ten or fifteen minutes? Almost anything can be harmful in excess. You can die from drinking too much water.
I shiver at the thought of "well meaning ignorance". Who out there really believes Michelle could govern our country?

Right and be Red

Sure, for some writing is just cathartic. Journals and diaries, notes and doodles. It is that for me.
However, when I blog, I'd like to know that I have readers. Unless someone (you ) post some sort of comment, I have no idea if I have succeeded in affecting you in some way. My goal is to make you think about an issue. If I am logical, accurate and persuasive, maybe you'll adjust the way you think. Or not. You know what I think about the subject. Please just give me the kindness of letting me know your views. I might change my thinking? (Yeah, sure).
No matter what you feel, please just let me know you read my blog. I would appreciate it.

Fists not arms

Have you heard defenders of the right to carry arms say that guns don't kill people; people kill people. This is just irrationalization clothed in inaccurate rhetoric. The truth is that people with guns kill people. Take away the gun and just how many deaths would be avoided? The gun is powerful, wieldable, and portable. It is most often the tool of bullies and cowards who wouldn't dare manifest their anger without one. The attacker is safe at a distance and most often is aiming at an unarmed victim.
Yes, people kill people. Yes, we have a right to defend ourselves. But how does one defend oneself from a deranged idiot shooting at you because he is a gang member getting initiated, or a angry fired employee trying to unload at his coworkers and bosses , or a macho jerk in a road rage deciding your death is the penalty for cutting him off, or an immature schoolboy bullied daily by his classmates seeking his notoriety and revenge?
How many people are punched to death in a fistfight? Now that's a manly, up-close, mutually honorable way to settle a dispute.

Boots Jaffee

Boots (Leonard Stephan) Jaffee is my younger brother; four years younger than I and now 60. I love him very much and he knows it.
Much of what anyone has heard or read about him is at least partly true - some is hype, but it always makes for a great story. He has run his own security business, a one man company, but many of whom he says were clients were not. So what?
He has worked with the Greatful Dead in several capacities and has met many famous people.
He was road manager for Merle Saunders Rain Forest Band for years and traveled all over the country with them.
He is a great self-taught chef, like my dad, only Boots make money at it. Forget the cooking in Italy and France. Hype. He did win a medal in an industrial "Iron Chefs" competition - his boss sent him. That's appreciation. He won it after wrecking his car and being bruised up on his way to the airport! I'm certain first place would have been his, had he caught his flight uninjured.
Bootsie likes to drink and so do I. He's is always a sweetie as am I when inebriated.
He is a wonderful artist. He sends out a new hand sketched Christmas card every year. I have kept them all . We're Jewish, but I look forward to his artwork regardless of season. I keep pushing him to pursue his art and make some money at it.... but....
Boots has two boys of his own. Zac is all over the world acting, but now in NYC, Asa is in California living the vida loca and loving it. Facebook got us in contact. I love seeing my nephews photos and hearing about their lives.... Boots and I both missed out on these guys living so far away from them.
Boots has a life long relationship of adoration and mutual respect with Odetta - the lovely, open-hearted folk artist of the sixties and on. Odetta has passed, but my brother venerated his memory of her.
Chris, is a lovely woman who has put up with my brothers for many years. Since she is a women of great heart, insight, strength; they have both found steadfastness in each other. What can I say? Boots must be wonderful! She is. Boots has established close and trusting relationships with all three of his stepchildren. They put up with him too.
Talent, compassion, loyalty, and love of life. Boots Jaffee