Memory is a funny thing — enigmatic, selective, nebulous, concrete — a source of wonder to the scientifically untrained mind such as mine. You are the sole custodian of your memories and memory can be very selective. A story told many times may be embellished, even myth-like, if there is no one around to challenge your recollections.
Judges make decisions that affect all of us, yet when it comes time to vote for them, most of the time I don’t know enough about any of them to cast an intelligent ballot.
I wasn’t cut out for this. By “this” I mean the dreary outpouring of information, misinformation and disinformation around the subject of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale.
While I do not pose as an expert on all aspects of the health care reform debate, there are several useful contributions that I can make to political sanity regarding comparisons with the Canadian health care system. My family and I have been traveling to our northern neighbor for over a quarter century. We join into a cooperative program with a group of Canadians for our vacation each summer.
Before you call for more school time, you need to consider what experts want us to do with the time we already have. And these days, everybody’s an expert.
In fall, everyone celebrates the bright colors, the fresh nip in the air and the ear-catching sound of geese flying south. And I do share that joy of a Northeast autumn. I just wish it did not come with mice.
It first occurred to me during the ceremonies surrounding Walter Cronkite’s death and was then reinforced with the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy: Almost all of the major events that have happened during my lifetime have taken place in black and white.
The American flag. We rise as it passes by; we hold our hands to our hearts and pledge our allegiance; and sing its praises in our national anthem. No such heartfelt beliefs sprang from the recent actions of a Valley Falls man.
Regarding the case of Steve Raucci, perhaps we should just disregard the right of an American citizen to be tried by a jury of his peers and just convict him by the court of public opinion.
One of my favorite childhood memories is the vacations we took together as a family during the 1970s. Most summers we traveled to Ogunquit, Maine, and rented the same cottage for one week or, when we were lucky, for two weeks. “A lot of people don’t take vacations,” my dad would say. “You’re lucky to go on one.”
Memorial Day weekend 1969, we bought an old house in the country. It was a very old house in a very old village. The house was built in 1823 with 12-foot barrel ceilings, 12-paned windows and crown moldings. We also acquired crumbling plaster, water stains, holes in the foundation, mice in the walls, coons tipping the garbage and a cellar floor deep in mud.
