New Shoes in the Rain

Good Monday morning, friends.  We're experiencing some temperate weather here in central Kentucky lately, which is more than I can say for my friends out west, where wildfires are raging in numerous locations.  If you're near any of those spots, please be safe! Several different things to note this morning, so forgive me if I jump a little too rapidly from topic to topic. First, my wife and I went to a movie yesterday, which we now do about twice a year.  Went to see the latest "Mission: Impossible" picture, starring the never-aging Tom Cruise.  As an aside, whomever is doing Tom's aesthetic work is doing a great job! Anyway, without going into any detail, this was a great action/adventure film, full of nice plot twists and great action sequences.  The advance media articles noted in great detail what lengths Cruise will go to for realism, as he's built that expectation among his fans, and I have to say, what appears in these movies is among the best of ...

Happy birthday to me.... Today is my 58th birthday, friends!  I don't feel all that different, of course.  Turns out that I share this birthday with Alexander the Great, the actress Diana Rigg, former Minnesota Twins great Tony Oliva, singer Kim Carnes, guitarist Carlos Santana, television personality Erica Hill, and supermodel (and wife of quarterback Tom Brady) Gisele Bundchen, among many others. I think that this is all that we have in common, although I do know how to play the guitar a little bit.... Was chatting with a friend yesterday via text message (that's how we do it these days, you know) and in speaking of today's birthday I referenced an old Jimmy Buffett song title:  "Growing Older but Not Up."  Seems to fit my current mindset!  I'm not rebelling against my current age but also not giving in to it, either. Think about this:  I've got a wonderful wife, two great kids (who are also married to terrific people) and five beautiful grandchi...

Good Tuesday morning to all. Allow me a couple of comments about the U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki, Finland yesterday. We're in a dark and rather dangerous place now, and my feelings echo virtually all of the analysis and coverage that I've read over the past eighteen hours.  What President Trump did in siding with President Putin and against the entirety of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities is unprecedented and I am honestly unsure what can be done about it. Officials in the Trump Administration can resign and make some noise on their way out of their positions, but that won't really change anything.  And our Republican-controlled Congress has done what it always does....make some statements about how bad all of this is, but it never leads anywhere. For my part, those average citizens who are not happy with our current course have one clear alternative--vote.  No, we're not voting in a presidential election, but the entirety of the House of...

Friends, it's still hot here in central Kentucky, but, hey, it's July, so you have to believe it's gonna be this way, right? We've gotten some local news recently that I found very interesting.  Of all companies, Wal-Mart is closing some stores in our vicinity.  You're reading that correctly.  They're closing the remaining "general merchandise" store in Lexington, which means that the store that's going away isn't a SuperCenter.  I forgot there were still stores like that, given that Wal-Mart was a client of mine some twenty years ago and the SuperCenter was a relatively new concept at that point. Anyway, this particular location is directly across a major road from a Kroger Marketplace store, and company management apparently determined that they could not adequately compete without adding a grocery department to this store, and that apparently wasn't possible. They're closing a similar store in Louisville, as well as two of thei...

It's Monday and it's hot again.  Enough of that. Like most people, I read and hear and see the news and things that pertain to our current President and his administration never cease to astound me.  And the word I keep coming back to is "cruel." I could just as easily settled on "inept," "indifferent," "inexperienced," "unfeeling," "vindictive," or any number of other single words. But "cruel" seems to sum up so much of what we're exposed to. To make my point: --The Trump administration acknowledged in the past few days that it estimates approximately 3,000 children were separated from their parent(s) when they attempted to enter this country illegally or arrived and requested asylum.  To this moment the Administration also acknowledges that they do not know the precise whereabouts of these children's parents, or whether the parents may have already been deported back to their countries of ...

Good Monday morning to all.  We're in the midst of a very hot stretch of weather here in central Kentucky, which was nicely broken by a mid-afternoon rain yesterday.  No such luck for a couple of days, it seems. And I'm being completely honest with you! How did we get to the point where we are forced to question the honesty of virtually everything that's said to us, that's reported to us, that we see and that we experience? When famous people say something is "fake news," they're either lying or saying that someone else is lying.  Period. There are no "alternative facts," as a White House counselor famously stated to a reporter some months ago, when confronted with a blatantly false statement made by a fellow staffer. When a college football or basketball coach says "I'm not planning to leave" and then announced a new contract with a different university a short time later, he was lying, plain and simple. When an athlete...