Rage haikus
Taking it in stride
I value friendships more than ever.
The stadium has not been maintained. (The county at fault?) Estimates for repairs are near half a billion dollars with $200,000 more for added fan amenities. Another option is a new stadium, tearing down this one before it is even paid for. This would be at least another billion, with the Bengals 1 billion business asking for everything and willing to pay for nothing. Another scam like Paul Brown stadium. No cheap thrills.
NEWLY LEAKED document details Donald Trump’s plans if he is elected President.
His father was a Marine, his mother worked part time as a classroom aide. He was comfortable in his body and played several sports in middle school and high school. He graduated from a small college and soon worked for the government. Then he didn’t. Then he did. Then he didn’t. He was a corporate consultant for a short time and then retired. His impact on the lives of his grandchildren and on the T-ball teams he coached would be something they would always recall. He was diagnosed with invasive cancer, refused chemo and within weeks was dead.
As a baby, he laughed all the time. He kept laughing through elementary school and middle school. In high school, classroom learning became the dead time between his social education in the halls. In preparation for the SAT, he gave full attention to his hair. After graduation he went to beauty school, opened his own shop and became an accomplished and sought-after beautician in his hometown. One day on his way to work, he was knocked from his scooter, killed instantly by a drunk driver. His obituary reported, “… he was a beloved hairdresser with a bubbly sense of humor, and a Baptist.”
I don’t know about you, but I get very discouraged with all of this “student athlete of the week” business. Athletics is extra-curricular, but what about academic studies in the curriculum? What about honoring the student scholar of the week, or the student musician of the week, or the student artist of the week, or the student scientist of the week, or the student poet of the week?
Is this the best we can do with our capacity to love?
Every day we are flooded with corporate marketing that sugar coats our age old sins in very sophisticated and entertaining ways.
Vanity? No, it’s youthful beauty, creams, oils, botoxing, weight loss plans, eyelid rejuvenation, hair styling, fashion and more.I’ve been thinking about death. I’ve seen too many elderly in nursing homes who have no awareness of who they are or where they are. They sit drooling, with infrequent family visits. Others where suffering can only be alleviated by drugs. If I cherish life, I have to ask myself: What is life? If I affirm human dignity, I have to ask myself: What is human dignity?
I don’t want to be the object of obligatory care and awkward visits that I have no awareness of. The personal resources I’ve accumulated during my life were meant for family and charity not simply for care to keep me teetering on death. Life is not simply still breathing. Life is joy, pleasure, consciousness and dignity.From the time I was born, I knew I was strange—at least in relation to the rest of my family. So, I developed a veneer of normalcy to cover up this strangeness. After a time, I realized it was time to come out of my strangeness closet. This was a good decision because I came to understand that everyone was strange in their own way, and that this was a key indicator of their uniqueness as a human being.
So, come out of your strangeness closet and be your own strange self. The only caveat: Do no harm.Aging is a journey that takes you:
From bikini underwear to DependsSo indeed, bugs are people, too, and dogs are people, too
Joe Burrow wanted $275 million. Joe Burrow got $275 million. Good for him. Now he has to prove he’s worth it. He has to show how to “do some good.”
We must recognize, though, that we are the ones really paying his salary. We have mor power than we think. We want 3 stadiums, we get 3 stadiums. We don’t want low-income housing, we don’t get low-income housing.Measure the success of art by how deeply it penetrates you and by what it releases from inside you that you never knew was there.
I never understood the concept of MVP in football. It’s a team sport and the MVP couldn’t be an MVP with the rest of the team. It’s almost always the quarterback anyway. How do the rest of the team feel?
Have you noticed that in commercials lately everybody’s dancing, dancing because their kitchen is so clean, their medications are so right, their house is so beautifully appointed and free of dampness and odor? These are messages of happiness and joy at your fingertips.
No. They are disguised messages of shame. Shame on you for not having and wanting these things and the joy they will certainly bring.We need to practice awe in relation to the world around us. There is awe in a leaf. There is awe in a singing bird. There is awe in the pebble and the shell. There is awe in the capacity of our hands. There is awe in the complexity of our bodies. There is awe in the mysteries of the universe.
Without awe, we are mundane creatures living mundane lives. Awe pulls us into the universe as participants. If our education system cannot make awe a reality for us, we have failed.What kind of culture enables violence, mass murder, depression and suicide, child and spousal abuse, drug use, addiction, overdose deaths, poverty and homelessness, racism, anti-Semitism, sexual abuse, sexualization of marketing, consumerism, waste, and lack of confidence in its legislative and judicial systems to exist in the levels we see in America today?
We spend incredible amounts of money and effort trying to mediate all these problems. How successful have we been? How much time do we spend really identifying and attacking root causes?The world has been built by labor—slavery, forced labor, migrants, indentured servitude, cheap labor, peasants, sweat shops, even child labor. One day is not enough to recognize the contributions of workers.
A new phenomenon is sweeping the grades 1-3 football community: The Grandma Cheer Squads. Grandmas decided that since they had to attend games, they might as well be overt about it. Uniforms and pom-poms are being designed and regular practices are in the works. Said one grandma: I haven’t kick this high in a long time, and I don’t care who sees my panties.
A few grandpas are being recruited as well to help with the flips and pyramids.And questions linger
