New Shoes in the Rain

It's Thursday, friends, so hope you're looking forward to the weekend. I was very upset with the news from Colorado that there was yet another mass shooting event in that state, a state where my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live.  This event occurred at a King Soopers grocery store, part of the same chain where my daughter and her family shop and not terribly far away from the Boulder store where this happened. The following day we learned that the suspected assailant is a 21-year-old man with a history of violent outbursts and assaulting others, a man who had been bullied by fellow students earlier in his life.  To my knowledge there's been no specific statement made about the motive for the attack, which left ten people dead.  In his initial court appearance yesterday, his attorney requested a mental health assessment of her client. Just a few days before, a man entered and opened fire on employees and others in a series of Asian-owned spas in the Atlanta ...

IT'S FRIDAY! Need I say more?  Maybe not, but I will anyway. I'm working in my home office today, having spent yesterday out in the field, and am listening to a Dire Straits album that was first released in 1980.  Yes, that's approximately 41 years ago, and I make no apology for that.  The band's leader, Mark Knopfler, was and is a guitar prodigy (search him on YouTube and prepare to be astounded at his talent and range).   I prefer to think of music like this not as old but as enduring.  I've listened to some of Knopfler's solo recordings since the breakup of Dire Straits (by the way, that's a really cool name for a band) and I like some of the music, but not as much as his old band. By way of explanation, if you're a regular visitor here, you may have looked at the sidebar comments about me and you'll see that I don't generally listen to music made by performers younger than I am. That's getting harder, since I'll be 61 in July. But tha...

The week's nearly over, friends, so hope you have a good weekend planned and get the weather to do some things you'd like to do! It was a year ago today that we received so much news about how COVID-19 was already influencing our normal way of life.  On this day The WHO declared it to be a pandemic.  Then-President Trump announced a national ban on travel from Europe.  The NBA cancelled some games.  We learned that Tom Hanks and his wife had both been diagnosed with the virus.  And we were told by public health experts that things were going to get a great deal worse. And they did.   Today, though, I'm struck by how many positive things seem to be happening right now, and, of course, some of this is a matter of perspective.  First up, President Biden will sign the American Rescue Plan tomorrow, which passed both houses of Congress despite not receiving a single Republican vote.  Audacious in its dollar value of nearly $2 trillion, the bill provide...

Greetings one and all.  Hope the weather hasn't caused you any problems....certainly feel badly for those affected by the heavy rains and subsequent flooding throughout parts of the Ohio Valley, including parts of my home state of Kentucky. I like to think of myself as a neat and reasonably well-groomed fella.  I once had hair that covered my ears, a period that ended when I began working an after-school job where unloading trucks was a regular task and got tired of having sweaty hair.  I had a semi-beard briefly in college, but only once after that did I attempt facial hair, and shaved that off soon thereafter.  And I've worn my hair in what I would generously call a crew cut for about twenty years. With all of that in mind, I've always had a few distinct habits when it comes to my personal grooming.  I must confess that I've never been an everyday blade shaver.  My dad gave me an electric shavers when I turned 16 (would have liked to have received a car, ...