My Grandmother

If my Grandmother was still alive she'd be 116. I spent my boyhood years living with my grandmother and listening to her talk about how things were. Believe me you get great perspective if you pay attention to the old folks.  I still credit her beliefs passed on to me as the ones that have carried me this far. She was an immigrant with third grade education and a Phd mind.

On the Prospect Park Bike Lanes

I cross the PPW bike lane several times a week every week. Believe me when I say how frightened I am by the prospect of having to do so. Do I wait for the light to change? Do I have right of way? Those six feet of walking is so fraught with danger that sometimes I lay awake at night unable to have another thought in my head. It just spins and spins in my brain and of course I can't sleep. I have fantasies that I can't turn my head to see if a bicyclist is coming. I am frozen with terror. Those green lanes, those horrible green lanes turn into vile toothed creatures with claws. Oh the horror. The horror.  . .And now my shrink is demanding that I pay more since all I do is talk about bike lanes, bike lanes, bike lanes . . . help. 

On the state of politics as we know it today

Back in the days before there were any media at all, except maybe the local weekly (if that) or maybe the local preacher (See "Sinners in the hands of an angry God," Jonathan Edwards 1741),  people had little to look forward to in the way of entertainment. But what they did have were politics. And when the politicians came to town they had themselves a good old fashioned party--which is probably why the politicians called their organizations "parties." Now given all the media and entertainment we have, politics still or maybe more so has become a huge entertainment business. And it seems that every cycle it has become bigger, louder, more annoying, time consuming but providing no insight into anything and hardly more entertaining. . .