Anything goes in these pages, same as the weather.
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On North Korea and surprises. I’ve been thinking about the summit with North Korea and wondering if president Trump is getting good advice. I have no reason to think he’s not, other than remembering a couple of instances when we Americans didn’t get good advice. The first instance that came to mind was reading about […]
Here is a letter I wrote to the Denton Record Chronicle that did not get published. Sean McCrory, its executive editor, was nice enough to write back explaining that “a response to a column it’s not something we normally would do as a guest essay.” He suggested I shorten it as “a letter to the […]
Life is truly stranger than fiction and the World Cup proves it. Who would have thought the defending champions were going home so early? That South Korea is out, even after beating Germany, and because of them, Mexico gets to move forward. That alone should have won the Koreans the “bless you my son,” trophy […]
On immigration . . . I’m an immigrant, a legal one, with a US passport and my first language is not English, which sounds like a confession, but it’s not: it’s a fact. I was born in Corral, Chile, a very different place than anywhere in this country. I also remember the excitement of coming […]
Reading about the pro-gun vs gun-control debate one has to wonder if the vocal ones on either side will ever learn. Nobody is changing their minds, nobody wants to, and the very reason one side gives to make a change, is the reason the other side wants to keep it the same. In fact, there […]
Sometime this year this country will become the world’s largest oil producer. Yes, bigger than Saudi Arabia and Russia. And that’s not all, the producers are making money and lots of it. So what happen to all the talk of conservation, gasohol, reducing emissions, solar cars, greenhouse gases, global warming and all the rest? Nothing, […]
Phan Thi Kim Phúc Know who this is? No? Well, I didn’t either until this week. For years people have referred to her as napalm-girl, only I never knew her real name until this week. Her picture at the age of nine running naked down a road, screaming in fear and pain after a napalm […]
Same ol’ Amigos. What a week of the same old stuff!: the press has been fawning over the North Korea, South Korea love affair, the president’s love affairs, Russian meddling, stocks up one week, down the next, no deal on immigration, the budget crisis and now Florida. Like I said, no news: a week of […]
Amigos. I’ve thought about this, and I think one of the recurring problems of human society has always been maintaining the fine balance of method vs. principle ‒ with some stressing the former over the latter while others, calling themselves more real-world and practical, prefer it the other way around. And there’s no easy answer. […]
Somebody once said that if you feel too small to be effective, then you have never been stuck in a dark room with a mosquito. I thought about that and how unworldly the statement is, considering they were talking about a mosquito, just one. Many years ago in a fishing trip to one of the […]