Like multi-millions of other Americans, I spent much of the weekend thinking about Alex Pretti. Combing through countless media reports, checking for up-to-the-minute alerts, trying, flailing, really, to write something coherent yesterday that would bring a modicum of ease and a shred of understanding to the awful scene of his murder. Abhorrent as it is, I kept cueing up the raw video footage and still photos, as if at some point I could finally come to some halfway sensible conclusion about how it all came to this. How it is that eight masked, heavily armed and armored agents of our…
-
-
The most profound spiritual truths in the world can usually fit on a bumper sticker. That doesn’t mean they’re easy to put into practice, “Simple, not easy” being the profound truth of that matter! But in general, if we manage to faithfully follow a set of core maxims in our daily lives, we will very likely die happy and content in the knowledge we have fulfilled our most basic human obligation: to have lived a decent life. “Be kind,” “Love thy neighbor,” “Practice compassion,” “Show mercy,” “Express gratitude,” “Dare to hope,” “Spread joy,” “Tell the truth,” “Commit to something beyond…
-
So Renee Good is dead, Venezuela is under American occupation for who knows how long, United States Coast Guard boats are seizing oil tankers flying Russian flags on international waters , and on Friday, the president of the United States told a meeting of skeptical oil and gas executives whom he’s trying to convince to return to Venezuela that he also covets ownership and occupation of Greenland. About which he mused, “I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”…
-
From the final minutes of Friday night’s “Washington Week in Review” broadcast and podcast on PBS, with host Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of “The Atlantic” magazine, and Thomas Friedman, “New York Times” columnist for global affairs. Goldberg: “Do you think Trump would actually go to war with Venezuela in 2026?” Friedman: “I would rule out nothing, Jeff.” *** From Friedman’s column in the “Times” mere hours later, after United States forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a 2 a.m. raid and flown them to New York, where they will likely stand trial on “narco terrorism conspiracy”…
-
For many of the January 1st’s of this blog’s existence I offered up a New Year’s Day song or poem or song-and-poem that I thought might engender a few moments of repose, hope, gladness and gratitude for the life before us, in all its sometimes complicated-as-hell feeling states. But in reviewing my previous new year’s posts yesterday, I discovered, with no small degree of dismay, that the past two January 1st’s have been unaccountably and inexplicably quiet, dark, unexpressed, unlit. Oh, dear……My very very verrrrry bad! Lord knows I need me some of that repose, hope, gladness and gratitude after…
