Society
- Written by: Bent Lorentzen
- Category: Society
View of the Adirondacks from Dannemora Mountain
This is a true story
All images are the real places the boy experiences
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
“Bridges not walls..” That was a post today by a friend of mine. There has been a great deal of discussion about walls this past year, some believing that walls solve problems. Robert Frost suggested “Good fences make good neighbors” in his poem Mending Wall (1914). I started reflecting on historically significant walls in history. The Great Wall of China is one that most people are familiar with and one famous wall that no longer exists is the Berlin Wall. Do walls help or hinder peace among people? Could we live peacefully without walls and fences? In his poem, Frost explores the paradoxes in humans as we "make(s) boundaries and we (he) break(s) boundaries".
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
Love the United States? Thank an immigrant. If it wasn’t for an immigrant- you probably wouldn’t be here. Except, if you are Native American. The rest of us, though, our roots go back to other continents, some earlier than others. In the United States I am the first generation of immigrants and in Canada I can trace my roots back to 1642. I am born of immigrants in both countries and I am an immigrant to the United States. Recently, my mother had her DNA analyzed and there were some surprises, we had always thought we were from France because we can trace all of the branches on my mother’s side to France, one branch all the way back to the 12th century, but it turns out that we are mostly British. For us it was fascinating and interesting. Ancestry.com gives one a detailed packet of information when they send the results of the test. We were not as upset, though, as poor Mr. Craig Cobb who found out he has 14% Black DNA. You may remember he was the man trying to buy property in Leith, North Dakota where he tried to create his very own paradise, an all-white supremacist community.
Last week, the Colombian government announced it had reached a “permanent and bilateral” cease fire with the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrilla group, celebrating a major milestone in the resolution of the country’s 50-plus years of armed conflict. It is an unprecedented, historic effort that many Colombians welcome. However, the cease fire was borne of a negotiation between the government and FARC alone, and there are many other players fanning the flames of Colombia’s national armed conflict.
- Written by: William Hunn
- Category: Society
A Lesson From Dad
I'm not sure I actually remember breaking the window but I certainly do remember learning how to fix it. It was one of those incidents of childhood, retold so often that it becomes part of the family legend obscuring the dim line between memory of the story and the memory itself.
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Society
(This is based upon a flurry of unattributed and unsubstantiated reports about the Orlando, Florida shooter, with regard to his possible social, religious and psychological conflicts – in conjunction with his reported, intimate familiarity with gay social media and clubs.)
The initial, aftermath reports of the Orlando shooting have the seemingly unaffected father of the revealed shooter supposedly supplying a clue to what had prompted the slaughter. Supposedly, the father, son and grandson, on a visit to Miami, had witnessed a public interaction among men that had enraged his son, Omar Mateen. Subsequent reports seem to reveal that the father really did not know his son.
- Written by: Deborah Baron
- Category: Society
“Mom, is that you? Am I in a hospital?” her daughter asked.
- Written by: Curtis W. Long
- Category: Society
Muhammad Ali (ne Cassius Clay), after a surprisingly long life, finally has succumbed to the results of the rigors of his trade in the boxing ring. For the past decades, he was a pitifully impotent shell of his former, robust self.
