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The Warrior Ethos?
I… um… the… it’s… but… there are no words. I’ll try though. I thought it was hilarious – ignorant, stupid, childish, petty, but hilarious – last March when Newsweek reported that pictures of “Enola Gay,” the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan during WWII, were flagged for removal from the…
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1,112 and Counting
It is June 1st. That may not mean anything to you other than “oh yeah… summer’s here.” But to 13.9 million (13,942,200) adults in the US (number reported by the UCLA School of Law – Williams Institute, December 2023) who identify as LGBTQ+ it marks the beginning of a very significant month: the month we…
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Portmanteau
As a boy, I thought Star Trek was real. And by that I mean the original series. Not “The Next Generation” with young Wesley Crusher, upon whom I had a crush. Crusher-crush. Nah, too easy! Before you call me a dirty old man, or something worse, remember, when we first meet Wesley, in the pilot…
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The Stuffing Letter
I have kept a journal since I was 19. A “journal” is like a diary, except entries are not made daily (though they can be) and it is not meant to be a record of anything: such as, “met Ryan for coffee,” or “saw Jennifer Aniston at the Farmer’s Market.” I use my journaling (the…
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Palm Springs includes pets in its disaster plan
Back in January, as Los Angeles endured horrific devastation due to wildfires, I wrote about a subject I fear is all too often an afterthought, if it is thought of at all: in the event of a disaster, what happens to people’s pets? At the time, I observed: In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that…
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Aftermath
It can’t happen here. Palm Springs, California. Where the winters are like spring in most places, where spring sees the temperatures rising steadily toward that first triple digit day each year, and where the summers, if you’re not used to them, feel like you’ve been transported to the surface of the sun. Palm Springs, California. …
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An Ode to the Dumpling
If we’re going Asian, I gotta have potstickers, gyoza in Japanese restaurants and jiaozi in Chinese eateries. Either way, they are dumplings – made with garlicky meat or shrimp and vegetables, wrapped in a thin noodle-like wrapper with pleated edges – and they are delicious. You can get them steamed or fried, and they are…
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Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Let’s get this out of the way right at the start. No. I don’t know who he is. But that is not to say I don’t remember him. Knowing the incubation period for the virus, I can narrow it down to one guy. I call him “white SUV guy.” He lived in Larchmont, a trendy…
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Asking For Help
I got my first “powerchair” (motorized wheelchair) in 2014, seven years after I became wheelchair-bound, and it was nothing short of ecstasy. For the seven years prior, I had grown accustomed to being restricted to a wheelchair; I wasn’t happy about it, but I made the best of it. I lived on my own in…
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Putting America first does not mean putting humanity last
We have a vice president who is a recent convert to Catholicism and, like Ross Douthat at the New York Times, thinks this qualifies him to tell us what Catholicism is (and what it isn’t). It was JD Vance who was among the last people to see and speak with Pope Francis before he died…
Your mileage may vary.