First Blog

  Field of Dreams We know it well. Picture this field as a vast plane, stretching to infinity. In it is contained all your hopes, ideas, wishes, aspirations, yearnings, and desires. Even faith has a presence. Many visit often. Some live there. Only a few have forgotten where it is. This field is special, part fantasy, part spiritual, part a plan, and part the solution. It is the place where dreams meet reality. Each of us sees this field stretching before our present and future. For each, there are hopes, even prayers for those dreams to come true.   Your field of dreams is a fertile plain, lush with flowers and grasses, but also with spines and thorns. because not everything growing there is what you want.   To be avoided are those most tempting, the dreams of excess. We should thus call this short essay Your Field of Dreams Parents often say, “Sweet dreams” to their children on tucking them in. Before that, you dreamt of having children, healthy and able, good and happy. Befo

You may not have ESP, but you do have some equally important extra senses . All of us have special senses unavailable to machines or other living things. Not reading the future, or moving objects by pure thought, these senses are more important to you in almost every way. They are not called senses in normal parlay but without them, you’d have an empty existence. Far beyond taste, smell, touch, sight, and hearing, they carry you through the most difficult times and propel you to excellence and achievements amazing even yourself. They lift you from despair. They heal your broken heart. They enlighten your life's journey. The Paranormal Suppose you’ve just heard that a computer can “perceive” the cards of the standard paranormal deck.   You know squares, wavy lines, circles, stars, and the like.   You would say nonsense and say it quickly. Because if it could, you could.   And this is because the computer functions on algorithms and algorithms are written by peop

Always have hope! Hope is like a tiny battery deep inside you that must not fail. If it fails, you fail. If you have hope, your system is activated to action.   With hope, you may try, work, invent and explore new ideas. You have a burden lifted into your being to discover new unknowns.   Without hope, you languish in a valley of inaction. Hope, like love, is fragile, easily breakable at first.   As well, hope can carry through the most difficult times. SPORTS. One manifestation of this is with sports teams.   When a team gives up on itself and loses hope, its fans also give up. Their supreme effort to win is dissolved. The conversation turns to next season and new player acquisitions. In European leagues, relegation is assumed, resulting in players looking to change teams. The entire team package is lost until it finds hope once again. CITIES. The city that loses hope, dissembles. It’s laws are not enforced; homelessness rises; city legislatures lose focus toward me

Always have hope! Hope is like a tiny battery deep inside you that must not fail. If it fails, you fail. Did you wake up this morning?   Have a little breakfast? Have a home to live in? Have a few dollars? Have some family?   Be thankful.   It could be a lot worse. Many a reporter is concerned more about constructing a complete sentence than about what’s in it. Politicians are concerned about neither. Is it true those with the greatest capacity for hate also have the greatest capacity for love?   Hmm.

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” -Henry David Thoreau Happy Thanksgiving to all.   This is the day of the year where we often eat too much and watch too much football. It is also a day to give thanks.   So, before the turkey is served, and before the games begin, I count the many blessings in my life.   First, comes my family.   With me or without, my family is a wonderful group of folks.   All are good people doing good things, working to be better, sacrificing for others, and helping their friends. It is my honor to be among you.    I am always grateful for my parents, both good people who helped me no end in those early years, pointing me in the directions of good works, morality, honesty, and strength of character. The second is my life, as in I still have one. Because my dad died so young, I thought the same would be my fate.   But now decades later I’m still here, and with a detour or two have my health – which I do appreciat

Dangerous Quotes – the talking points of our world. Many if not most Americans are moved by quotes, in fact simple quotes.   Here are three that may resonate. What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Power to the people. In God’s name … (fill it in) Today we consider a quote from Cervantes’ Don Quixote . “ When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”   Persuasive? Yes.   Articulate? Yes. Simple? Yes. Accurate?   Well, maybe but…   It is completely open ended, without any indication of what “should be”   should be.   It leaves to the reader the full imagination of possible worlds that could be.   It is attractive to a spectrum of opinion.   The most ardent Nazi and most dedicated Communist can both rally around. This is one problem today in the USA and

Today... It is cold today and I love it.  It allows me to be cold. Morale I. Sometimes the lack of morale you see all around is a reflection of the lack of morale you have personally. II. Your sense of morale can be more infectious to your mind than any disease to your body.  Consider the maxim, "Healthy mind, healthy body." Fun...  We live in the fun environment.  Learning should be fun, educators tell us.  This is not often the case.  Learning is hard work. But when accompanied by a sense of achievement, understanding, and enhanced personal power, it is most satisfying. Reflections... I am always just 18, full of hope, full of what could be, and eager to pursue many things all at the same time.  I love to read biographies of great persons, with interest even now piqued, particularly when these heroes were young. I look to what they did do, and compare with what I’ve done.  I make a few notes. a.    Many developed a true mission in life, though not always from th

A. “ Hope and Trust ” is a campaign slogan no one dares use these days – or ever.   Indeed, it seems never to have been used, but every campaigner at some point begins or concludes a speech beginning with the sentence, “I hope and trust …. “   This is the candidate’s principle platitude.   This is the phrase that enjoins the candidate to the voter, the stakeholder of the community.   This is the phrase that conjures faith in the what the following predicate and object suggest.     I presume no candidate will ever have the nerve to venture forth with this loaded couplet of terms as a slogan.   While many hope for the better, and while many have trust better times are before us, none use it as a slogan. It doesn’t resonate with anyone - except in the negative.   It asks just too much to believe. For the politician... Asking for trust is too much to hope for.  Hoping for trust is asking too much. Hope is a vague term having individual meanings for each voter.   Some hope for