NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
(REUTERS/Fred Prouser )
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Being a newspaper and news magazine junkie makes for a less than settling demeanor, to say the least. Sometimes, it almost makes me want to lose faith in mankind when I read the paper.
Get this advertisement from Donald Trump(of course, paraphrased): "Hi, I'm Donald Trump, the Learning Annex is paying me 1.5 million dollars to teach a real estate class." This is a guy who has bankrupted several companies and taken scores of creditors with him: Amazing! And, guess what? Thousands of people will pay the two hundred bucks to take his class. They already tune in by the herds to watch his reality TV show, the Apprentice. Talk about dumbing down. Help!
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
I am so amused by some of these letters especially, one from a guy who wrote an editorial denigrating women. One woman responded he was an angry, ill-informed, white man. I would have called him an ignorant, "f----er" (sorry, but that's how I feel. ) No wonder they don't print my letters. Just kidding.
ANGER CAN KILL YOU
(chronicle.augusta.com)
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Get this: Donald Frailey, driving a BMW, gets involved in a road rage tag match with a pickup truck driver. He and the pickup truck driver stop to possibly have an altercation.
The pickup truck driver grabs the keys of Frailey's BMW and throws them in the bushes and takes off. Frailey can't find the keys, so he walks three and a half miles home.
Frailey calls 911 and while he is talking has a heart attack and dies.
THE DENIAL OF AGING
The Denial Of Aging is the title of a really good book by Harvard doctor, Muriel R. Gillick. She tells it like it is. Here is my view of some of her ideas: there's no such thing as perpetual youth, eternal life (in this life), and other stupid fantasies; living longer isn't always golden is something she points out. However, there are literally many perils of getting older which we can control.
Sometimes finding redeeming features for old age ain't easy. And, yet, there are a few. I think that for me, one thing is history. It really means a great deal to have history about things: family, events, etc. I often think of Vietnam as an example. It was the event of my lifetime, at least on the world stage, and I was a part of it. A participant, not an observer!
I've always liked Ogden Nash's poem which has enormous relevance. It basically says that we are living way too long. People get debilitating diseases at the end of a productive life. We should let them go. Unfortunately, relatives with culprit doctors often had rather see them "warehoused" in a nursing home or kept alive by some artificial means when it is truly time for them to "hit the road." Move from this life to the next!
Ogden Nash's poem:
"Herr Arthur Schopenhauer contended
That life's a snare and better ended.
To vindicate his cheerful view
He dies in bed a seventy-two. "
TUNING OUT REALITY
(REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz)
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Obviously, I have to say something about the war. With the Prez's poll numbers about as low as you can imagine, he still continues to follow the same script. In an interesting way, I admire his ability to tune out reality and pursue a message of not "cutting and running" or no troop withdrawals saying that he is listening to the commanders in the field. This amazes me.
Commanders only know what is in front of them and even the top guy can't have the full picture because we don't know what THE REAL PICTURE IS. A cartoon I saw recently painted it perfectly, the President is spraying gasoline on a fire with the caption reading, "Strategy For Victory."
About 2300 of our soldiers have died in Iraq and this saddens me to no end. We had a young Californian listed in the paper. The obituary said that after 9/11 he and two friends said they wanted to serve their country. "We decided that America was worth fighting for. We thought if we're going to live in this country and raise our families here, we had to do something before we started our lives." Wow, what a statement and now a loss life who'll never get a chance to do those things.
ZEALOTS
It so irritates me when I talk to some of these ideologues. I did that just the other day by talking to an intelligent, successful, financial planner who was also a right-wing zealot and had never served in the military.
No argument could touch him. He was a don't confuse me with facts, I have my mind made-up guy. He cited things like the UN resolution that gave us authority to go into Iraq. Then things like all wars are tough, losses have to be, and there have not been nearly as many soldiers killed in Iraq so far as there are people killed in muggings or auto accidents each year. Well, one thing to say to this idiot is that if you are the one killed or the loved one, it doesn't matter what number you are in the death count, the loss is 100%. KT
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