WORDS

This is where you will find short stories, personal essays, and guest posts.  Family and friends and the ordinary business of life are the inspiration for this section.

Funny Money

Funny Money

  Financial advisors would have you believe they inhabit an arcane world of alphas and betas and that they and they alone can navigate the mysteries of modern portfolio theory.  The reality is a bit different.  Let me tell you about an average day in the life of...

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The Minute Particulars

The Minute Particulars

  Think in the Morning thanks Lindell Stacy-Horton for her contribution to this post.   He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; William Blake, Jerusalem The...

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Poem by Think in the Morning: The Man in the Zocalo

Poem by Think in the Morning: The Man in the Zocalo

  The mind is restless. It never sleeps. Thoughts skip across the surface Like flat rocks on a lake Sink to the bottom Into darkness and mud.   A man traipsed the square leaning on his walker Straw hat.  Wide brim.  Khaki pants.  Plaid shirt Covered with...

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Calm Down and Shut Up: The Politics of Lao Tzu

Calm Down and Shut Up: The Politics of Lao Tzu

  [click on blue links for further information] NOTE:  All translations of Lao Tzu are from Ursula Le Guin or Witter Bynner unless otherwise noted.   You might say that I’ve been a mess of emotions since the November election.  The candidate that I least...

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El Chapo

El Chapo

  Today's News:   Drug lord 'El Chapo' extradited to the U.S. I wrote this one year ago while in Puerto Vallarta. Gotta Do It “Listen Guzman, we gotta do it.  We gotta build a wall.  Those Americans are flocking down here, drunks, fat people, cheapskates and...

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Trompudo, A Literary Phenomena

Trompudo, A Literary Phenomena

  [Please click on blue links for further information]   “Donald Trump – a ludicrous figure, but at least he’s lived it up a bit in the real world and at least he’s worked out how to cover 90 per cent of his skull with 30 per cent of his hair … It always...

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Two State Parks and a Red Tailed Hawk

Two State Parks and a Red Tailed Hawk

  “I do not think it is an overstatement that it appears just as important for California to have Mendocino preserved and guarded against encroachments as it was for Virginia to have Williamsburg restored and protected.”  Civil History Chair of the Smithsonian...

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Channeling Charles Péguy

Channeling Charles Péguy

There was a man, a Frenchman, you wouldn’t know about him, my child. . .He was a good man, a holy man, and he lived in sin all through his life, because he couldn’t bear the idea that any soul could suffer damnation. . .This man decided that if any soul was going to...

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My Week With Pierre Trudeau

My Week With Pierre Trudeau

NOTE:  Click on the highlighted links for sources and further information. Pierre and Justin Trudeau, the father and son Prime Minister team, were blessed with good luck as well as good looks. When Trudeau the elder ran for PM of Canada, Nixon and Humphrey were...

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JP’s Books

JP’s Books

UPDATE:  And now, there is this fascinating fact:  New Study Links Reading More Books To Longer Lifespan I have a friend.  Let’s just call him JP.  He’s a little older than I am and much smarter.  He’s cleaning house, disposing of the books he’s kept for years,...

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I Am a Computer Simulation

I Am a Computer Simulation

I woke up this morning in a fright, woke up from a long dream in which I imagined I was a computer simulation.  And now, and now I’m not sure if I’m dreaming this that I’m writing and if the dream was reality or the other way around. I’m not crazy.  Please do not...

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Daniel Bolelli, Thomas Paine, and St. John of the Cross

Daniel Bolelli, Thomas Paine, and St. John of the Cross

As our Independence Day fades into the unsavory miasma of what proves to be an entertaining but disappointing Presidential election season, I find myself unable to let go of one of my all-time heroes, Tom Paine.  Googling about in a fit of nostalgia for the “good ole...

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