A breath of fresh air
Icy cold

Colorful leaves
Red and yellow
Stuck to wet pavement

The sun hangs low
To the south
Anxious to disappear

I can feel my fingers
And my ears
And my toes

Anticipating:
Turkey
Stuffing
Pumpkin Pie

And memories
Of years gone by!

Rob's piece of the Berlin Wall

 The very first time I actually touched the Berlin Wall was an exhilarating experience! My body absorbed all the memories of fear, death, struggle, hope, tears, joy and pain that were mixed into the concrete. A testament to the future. Standing in… Read full post »

In December, 1988 I sat with my friend Tibor in his parlor in Budapest, fascinated by his account of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. On the train to Vienna a few days later I contemplated Tibor’s warning that Hungarians were at the end of their rope regarding Soviet occupation. Tibor insisted So… Read full post »

The recent shooting rampage at Fort Hood is the supreme test of what it means to be a real American! This is our moment to shine! This is the time to reflect on the diversity of the melting pot we call the United States of America. This is the time to… Read full post »

I’m from San Francisco. In the autumn of 1978 the city was devastated by two events that shook the world. First the Jonestown massacre, followed by the assassination of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. We are a special breed of Americans. We are situated between several fault li… Read full post »

Bring back the Mom and Pop business! Bring back Made In America! Bring back GOD IS LOVE!

Here’s what I know:

America is no longer number one in anything but military power! We are a selfish, dumbed-down, greedy, misinformed culture that repeatedly misses opportunities.

Health care costs and healt… Read full post »

In the summer of 2000, I lived in an apartment in the center of Berlin. I lived directly across the street from the U-Bahn station, the underground. During the day a train would arrive every three minutes. I could simply walk across the street and catch a train that would take… Read full post »

“I will defend to my death, his right to say it!” This was a statement made recently in reference to the First Amendment. There was a time when I would have agreed with this defense of the American way of life. That was a long time ago when we really were… Read full post »

Re: the recent deaths in a sweat lodge in Arizona.

I know there are many facts that still need to be uncovered and many questions to be asked. As a person who struggles daily with respiratory disease, I would like to make a brief comment from the point of view of the… Read full post »

Life is a banquet
Small morsels of joy to whet the appetite
One course of blood, sweat and tears
Served on a bed of suffering
Tempered with essence of compassion
Followed with the sweet nectar of perception

Oh what a privilege
To be an epicure in a world of fast food

No great surprise to wake up on Sunday morning to find that President Obama has thrown a huge portion of his base supporters under the bus again.  He defends the mandate that every American carry health insurance or face a fine. He dances around the issue of the dreaded “tax increases&rdqu… Read full post »

The hospital is only about 6 blocks from where I live now. Even now, 15 years later, I am unable to drive past the emergency entrance without thinking about that fateful day and everything that ensued. Rob was seldom sick, so we had attributed his problems to panic attacks. But on… Read full post »

Where are the stories from those who are happy with their health insurance? Where are the examples that compete with the millions of horror stories of the uninsured, the underinsured, and the denied?  Maybe they are just happy they haven’t had to use their insurance!!

The thing we all have… Read full post »

This should be the rallying cry for the left, for all progressives. We should take back the streets, the media, the congress, and the debate over health care reform. We are blogging to each other, under the radar while the crazies are stealing the show. How much would it cost if… Read full post »

Bring the concept of six degrees of separation into the health care debate, and the separation becomes one to three degrees. For example, the degrees of separation between the lawmakers and the industries who not only perpetuated the health care crisis, but stand to gain literally tens of billions of… Read full post »

The first thing you need to know about me is that I have always been a bad boy. How? I ask questions! How can Mary be a virgin and also have a baby? How is it possible for a man to part the sea? How does a fat man get down… Read full post »

Because of the pain, suffering, death, hardship, threats, and mental anguish the health insurance industry has inflicted on my family, friends and myself, I have a moral obligation to refuse to give them money! I am outraged that a proposal is being considered to fine the uninsured! Without a strong… Read full post »

 This story begins way back in the first grade. Most people would say that was before I knew anything. But that’s not the way I see it. In many ways I knew a hell of a lot more than I do now. I knew how to live without… Read full post »

Africa

When I decided to accept an invitation to go to Africa it was not something I needed to sleep on. I had dreamt of making the trip since I was a young boy. When an Argentine diplomat invited me to spend the winter at his home in Nairobi I jumped at… Read full post »

One of the things I have always loved about summertime are peaches. I love the smell of ripe peaches, the texture of the flesh as it separates from the skin, allowing the juices to run between my fingers. The experience is never forgotten, like riding a bicycle. I carefully bend forward… Read full post »

Today Senator Robert Byrd called on the Senate to rename the health care bill after the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Everyone who is fighting for the urgent reform of our ailing health care system in America can honor the memory of Senator Kennedy by calling their Senators TODAY, suggesting that… Read full post »

The very first time I saw a Gay man interviewed on television was on the Phil Donahue Show from Ohio in the early 1970s. The excitement of seeing myself represented in a public forum in a positive way by an openly Gay man was tempered though, by the fact that Donahue… Read full post »

Everybody lies. The Democrats lie, the Republicans lie, the president lies, the Insurance Industry lies, the American people lie to themselves. We are incapable of telling the truth because we have all bought the lie that our stupid form of capitalist, so-called free market system, works. We tiptoe a… Read full post »

The First Amendment Is Not Absolute!

As a nation and a culture we sit back in horror as right-wing psychopaths spew out racially motivated hatred and outright lies. We assume there is nothing we can do. We falsely assume that The First Amendment guarantees the right for anyone to say anything… Read full post »

President Obama is always telling us to look forward, not back. In the last election we voted for change, only to find that the change we wanted is obstructed by those who are financially invested in the status quo. Today, on Obama’s birthday, we are presented with an opportunity to invest… Read full post »