I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to … [Read more...]

We all have our proverbial soapboxes.  Sometimes we find ourselves hauling them out on a regular basis, standing high atop them and vigorously pontificating on whatever we’re pontificating about.  Other times they’re rarely used except in those most exceptional moments when circumstances are of such magnitude that not pulling them out feels as … [Read more...]

Slavery as an institution is pretty far removed from the minds of most of us residing here in 21st century America.  Slavery sits back plenty far enough in the faded, yellowed and brittle pages of history to create a more than comfortable chasm between us and itself.  We view that chasm of time and social development and modernism as broad enough … [Read more...]

We like to ‘fool around’ in ways that are sometimes rather humorous, quite innocent and very healthy.  At other times we ‘fool around’ in ways that are rather devious and quite destructive.  Sometimes we want to set the seriousness of life aside for a moment and be a bit playful.  We need to remind ourselves that life is a serious venture where … [Read more...]

Wikipedia states that a perfect storm “refers to the simultaneous occurrence of weather events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the storm resulting of their chance combination.  Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its … [Read more...]

You ever notice that we seem to be on this relentless quest where we’re scrutinizing ourselves raw in order to ascertain what we think our flaws, our foibles, our weaknesses and our warts are?  We put ourselves under some sort of minutely dissecting microscope with skewed lenses in order to ferret out all of our little imperfections.  We … [Read more...]

I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to … [Read more...]

History has pivoted on ordinary people who when faced with extraordinary circumstances drew on some deeply submerged essence of their humanity and were, in those most harrowing of moments, transformed into extraordinary people.  There are those who held themselves of no accord who stood in harm’s way or entered the dangers of the fray and turned … [Read more...]

My life is spent in holes more times than its not.  Some are deep and some are not so deep.  I have this maniacal tendency to go from one hole to another, rarely staying above ground long enough to understand what above ground looks like.  Instead, I’m repeatedly looking up from the bottom of some hole that I don’t necessarily remember falling … [Read more...]

Some of us have very vivid imaginations.  We can effortlessly conjure up an endless litany of wildly creative concepts, mind-bending visions, and far-reaching theories that can eclipse the very imagination from which they were birthed.  We can be ingenious beyond the limits of our own ingenuity.  At times we find our own creations electrifying, but … [Read more...]