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, ...

I was reminded of this repeating line from the Ron Howard film "Splash," in which a scientist played by Eugene Levy keeps having things happen to him, each worse than the last.  Our premise today is that a good many people can and probably have said this in the last seven days. Let's start with our friends who reside in the state of Texas, where the triple-whammy of extreme and unseasonable cold temperatures, a complete failure of the largely unregulated power grid and subsequent failures of in-home plumbing and municipal water systems have left a large number of the citizens of that state to suffer one issue after another after another. Last week I checked in with a good friend from college who was my roommate for a couple of years after we both finished school.  He and his wife and kids have lived in greater Houston for over twenty years, and in an exchange of text messages he reported that they were subject to the "rolling" blackouts that some utility officia...

Hello, my friends, from central Kentucky, where it's a balmy 14 degrees!  We've had rotating bouts of snow and freezing rain and sleet and all manner of weather over the past few days.  Ice so thick on our sidewalk last week that I actually waved off the pizza delivery guy and met him in our garage.  And we have a tall shrub next to our front walk that has essentially drooped in three different directions.  I'll leave it alone until temperatures warm up but I'm not optimistic. I'm certainly lucky that I work from home when I'm not traveling, and, thanks to COVID-19, I'm not going anywhere regularly.  So on days like this I am thankful I don't have to risk my life to work. I'm also grateful that we were able to schedule the first dose of the COVID vaccine for my wife last Friday.  We had her signed up with four different entities, I believe, but the change came when the federal government released supplies of the vaccine to several national pharmacy c...

I hope everyone is having a good week, despite that pesky Punxatawny Phil having seen his shadow on Tuesday.  Incidentally, why don't they take into account the many TV lights in use when they drag the little guy out of his "house" to see what he "says?"  Always wondered about that. It's funny and a little sad that many of us thought that when the primary occupant of the White House changed last month that things would move into a more normal mode.  And, to be sure, they have.  There are regular briefings by a professional spokesperson who appears to be well-informed and empowered to speak on behalf of the current Presidential administration.  We have three-times-a-week coronavirus briefings led by professionals and featuring unfiltered comments by medical and scientific experts. But yet a lot of the conversation out of Washington still centers around controversial people, one who just left office and one who just assumed office.  I think you know both to w...