Society & Culture

…but I did leave it behind his car. I know of no culture where gift giving is not common, from within ordinary families to the highest echelons of government. In some cases, the giver has the expectation of something in return. Lewis and Clark found this out the hard way when they encountered native Americans…

I’ve long heard about parents having a talk with their kids about “the birds and the bees.” Why specifically birds and bees? I doubt any parent discussing with their progeny ever truly mentioned either. My parents never had “the talk” at all. My mother gave me a book. It was uninformative, wasted paper and ink….

I’ve often heard older adults lament the lack of book reading by today’s youth. Many of us observe the majority of younger people limiting their reading to texts filled with atrocious spelling and codes known only to them. Until recently, a large portion of society read books almost every day, from the time they started…

We sometimes hear old folks speak of their past as “the good old days.” I imagine that for them, that might possibly be true, at least at the moment. I, like many people, can look back to my early years and choose to remember only those times when life was quite good. At seventeen, flying…

“Liar, liar, pants on fire!” is a children’s chant when someone is caught in an untruth. No one, whether the liar nor the chanters, considers that an untruth occurred at some point to be very unusual or shocking. Lying is an unfortunate part of the fabric of life as far as each is concerned. My…

The movie, starring Robin Williams, loosely told the story of Armed Forces Radio Station DJ Adrian Cronauer. He was gone by the time I arrived in-country in February 1968. It’s odd I don’t remember listening to the radio during my two tours on boats in Vietnam, but I must have since I remember popular tunes…

I’ve been a reader of books from a very young age and have probably read thousands of books in my lifetime. Some were for entertainment, some for knowledge, and some for research. When I entered junior high, I gained access to a fairly large school library. The three genres I read most often were historical…

Fans of Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi books and films consider space the next frontier that mankind has yet to truly reach. Each historical frontier was considered (in its day) the ultimate “terra incognita”. Few forward thinkers tended to see beyond what seemed to be the ultimate challenge of man. Now we have…

It’s a mystery to me that Jewish people have been so reviled. I doubt any other single group has been as persecuted in as many places. Certain nations over the ages have made it their goal to eliminate them, Hitler being the latest. White supremacists consider the Jews part of the “darker races”, along with…

I do not believe we should punish people for committing crimes. It’s not a deterrent, nor does it help the victims of crime. I believe that many who desire to punish seek revenge rather than justice when clamoring for lengthy incarceration or death for the offender. I am sincere, and if you will continue to…