There was a time there, oh, along about 1980, when my Dad and I were just bachelors. My mom took off with some rich doctor to Florida, never to be heard of again until 12 years later (another story.) My dad and I were close, very close. We hunted and fished and played football and baseball, drove trucks and tractors and worked cattle, etc., etc. He wasn't even my real Dad. I'd find that fact out about six years later.
Continue Reading 1 comment March 24th, 2008
We had entered the “practice” portion of the “Women’s Health Conference: From Theory To Practice”—and that meant a group of us was walking in the woods to the Rio Grande Trail and thence into Clark’s Market in Aspen with Dr. Bob Vogel, the University of Maryland professor of medicine who doubles as chief of medicine for the Pritikin Longevity Center and Pritikin Research Foundation.
The idea of the conference, sponsored by the forward-thinking Aspen Center for Integral Health (acih.org) was to dig down deep into what goes down in the real world. Thus: the walk, a moveable lecture about what remains for us to feast upon in the healthiest of worlds.
Continue Reading 1 comment March 24th, 2008
When we visited Florida, my eldest daughter saw a snake. It was a harmless black snake, but menacing nonetheless, coiled up in a bush with frog legs dangling from its mouth. (From the frog’s perspective, I guess the snake was not so harmless.) Apparently, this sighting made a lasting impression on my daughter, as she has recently existed in an imaginary Reptilian World where man-eating snakes outnumber humans 10 to 1, maybe because snakes have already eaten most everyone.
Continue Reading 2 comments February 9th, 2008
A very smart and politically active woman and the Con Man had the following email exchange after his "Con Games" show about abortion and The Quiet Majority:
Michael,
I had a chance to listen to your show this am and agreed on most of your salient points regarding the silent majority.... But I could not disagree with you more on the liberal stance of abortion or pro-choice and your idea that ‘adoption’ could be the solution in order for there to be a meeting of the minds. Please don’t take this wrong, but it’s a typical male response. Until men are biologically capable of bringing a baby into this world, it really is about a women’s right over her own body. But in the spirit of being open-minded, if that were the answer and women would be subjugated to 9 months of pregnancy and to then give the child up for adoption, then it is only fair that the man who impregnated the woman should be castrated and not given the right to procreate ever again. How can you chattel one sex and not the other?
Continue Reading Add comment January 29th, 2008
MC: What were you writing when you started?
AM: In my twenties I wrote science fiction but I only had one book published. It was about a wife who drove her husband to be reduced to a set of teeth mowing a lawn. I became a feminist and said no to an offer to put it in an anthology.
MC: Why did you say no?
AM: I was stereotyping a hen-pecked wife. Like a lot of women in the early 1970s I got caught up in the women’s movement. It took me a while but one time I saw a guy snickering about a woman’s liberation march. I was so pissed—I had false eyelashes then, I wore tiny dresses, I was into being pretty. I started marching and got more and more involved. When I was in college I was standing around at college fraternity parties and nodding. Feminism made a lot of sense to me. I’m a great backer of Hillary Clinton.
Continue Reading Add comment January 22nd, 2008
Happy NEW YEAR to everyone! I hope that 2008 is absolutely GREAT for everyone in the valley. While it is starting out for me to be somewhat on the negative side, I truly believe it will all work out for the good by the time everything is all said and done. Cross your fingers! I very well may need your help.
What's been on my mind lately is my living situation. About 8 or 9 days ago, my roommate came up to me and told me that she was giving me a couple of days notice that she MIGHT be moving back to California to help care for her ailing 20-something son and that she would be leaving within a matter of a few hours of hearing what his test results were. She would also be taking only what she could pack into her car - leaving the rest of her stuff behind and that I would need to get a new roommate very soon!
Continue Reading 1 comment January 9th, 2008
Though I was born in New York, I had managed to completely ignore the Macy's Day Parade, even when it was my next- door neighbor on the mezzanine of 30 Rock. But I had occasion to notice it today, Thanksgiving Day, when my pledge to never watch a pre-game show led me to the next best thing: the Macy's Day Parade on NBC.
When did it come to this?
Barbie and Disney and M and Ms and every float was nothing but one commercial message after another. And another. Except for the bands, of course. High school bands from everywhere USA broke up the paid advertisements, the actual entertainment between the product plugs.
Continue Reading 1 comment November 22nd, 2007
In the immediate post-Civil War period in America, former slaves, in spite of having been “emancipated,” were legally not considered citizens. The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,promulgated by the Party of Lincoln, was intended to embed into the Constitution citizenship status for the descendants of former slaves. It was not intended to be a rationale for anyone from the far reaches of the planet who enter the U.S. illegally or deceptively and have children born here, to have those children ipso facto conferred upon with citizenship status.
The subject of birthright citizenship (“anchorbabies”, “jackpot babies,” 14th Amendment babies”) has become one of the many concerns in the complex of issues that is illegal immigration. The number of babies born annually to illegal aliens in the U.S. has been estimated to range from 200,000 to 650,000. Anchor babies by practice become instant citizens, immediately eligible for all the benefits and privileges of citizenship, including the eventual right to petition for their family members to settle in the U.S., thereby providing the first link in a potentially endless family chain migration, the single greatest cause of out sky-rocketing immigration numbers.
Continue Reading Add comment November 17th, 2007
This week I discovered that my three-year old daughter has a unique talent. Actually, calling it “unique” is an understatement. It’s fair to say that I know of no other toddler with this particular skill, though dredging the annals of “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” may turn up a child with similar powers.
This may be hard for some of you to believe, but it turns out my daughter is psychic. Not to the degree that she can see the future in a crystal ball, but she certainly has some kind of prophetic ability. Needless to say, I’m very proud.
Continue Reading 2 comments November 17th, 2007
The first 10 parts of this series sobered countless readers. It depressed many and caused despair for the faint of heart. However, most Americans can’t or refuse to grasp our dilemma. By checking our growth rates, not only will we add 100 million in three decades, we’ll add another 100 million on top of that, and do it again until we become one billion people by the start of the next century.
No one wants to discuss it. Everyone hush-hushes about the preacher’s daughter being pregnant. No one wants to talk about sexual or domestic abuse now epidemic in America. No one talks about 18 teenagers committing suicide every day in this country. Better not talk about the 22,000 deaths by drunken drivers annually! Let’s pretend it’s not happening.
Continue Reading Add comment November 5th, 2007
