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This is yesterday’s effort but Blogger didn’t like me then so you can have it today instead… Those of you who have read my stuff before will know I have a talent (read curse) for attracting odd people when I am standing in queues (particularly when waiting for buses). Well today I don’t have a [...]

Continue Reading Driving Lessons!

Well, after more than a month’s absence, a belated Happy New Year to you all. It hasn’t started out quite that way for me, much-explaining the time elapsed since my last post, and as most of you know, I was openly questioning whether this enterprise was even worth it anymore. Only about a dozen readers [...]

Continue Reading Job Hunting

Tom Pauken, writing in Chronicles magazine of Rockford, Ill., describes the hostility on the part of the Bush-Rove axis to real conservatives in action in Texas politics in the late 20th century — illustrative of how it is that in Washington at the top of the 21st, their act of suffocation continues, as this commentary [...]

Continue Reading More on Bush anti-conservatism: a view from Texas

[Headline in the style of Mark Shea, who has his good points, even though he has no time for the Annals whatsoever.] I’m not sure much direct comment is necessary to a story detailing a ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court that “Parents can’t monitor kids’ phone calls”, as a result of agitation on [...]

Continue Reading Sensible child-rearing

I would have never guessed that my life-long beloved Pittsburgh NFL team (which I’ve followed since the 1975 playoffs and Super Bowl X) was actually the first in the league to have a cheerleading squad! But since we’re dealing with the team owned by the late Art Rooney, a practicing Catholic (he actually had a [...]

Continue Reading Pittsburgh NFL team

Yes, it’s one of those intendedly “heartwarming” stories of how we in the 21st Century are making advances in how we celebrate the “holiday season”: the phenomenon of divorced parents coming back together just for the holiday celebration, along with all the kids: not only their own, but those of whom each “ex” has hooked [...]

Continue Reading Divorced parents back together just for Christmas

Deck the malls with bows of holly: fa la la la la, la la, la la! T’is the season to go shopping: fa la la la la, la la, la la! Merchants making off with all your dollars: fa la la, la la la, la la la … It’s enough to make me holler: FA [...]

Continue Reading Commercial Christmas season begins!

[Yes, nine days after the fact. My very ordinary retail job wipes me out totally at a day's end. And the "holiday" rush is yet to begin!] A few days ago, when I was first thinking of what I was going to say for a post-election commentary, I was just going to re-emphasize what I’d [...]

Continue Reading So now that Bush has won the election…

The Commemoration of All Souls does, alas, take a back seat this particular year to the U.S. Presidential elections even for myself: the souls in Purgatory always need our help, but days that could determine a civilization’s destiny don’t come all the time. Yet, for that, this elevation in our society of the exercise of [...]

Continue Reading U.S. Presidential Election Day

What follows are a few loosely-connected thoughts in epilogue to my election considerations posted last Oct. 19th…. * * * Forget about unemployment problems, or Social Security, or taxes. Never mind the atrocious network of propaganda mills posing as “educational institutions,” or the ticking time-bomb that is the U.S. health-care system. Don’t even sweat the [...]

Continue Reading Election reflections