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What is the magic of Christmas?
Whether you are Christian, and particularly if you are not, the Christmas season is hard to miss. It generally runs from late November thru to early January. Ostensibly, it recalls and celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in the town of Bethlehem, thought by his followers to be the long-awaited messiah or savior, prophesied…
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At a Loss
I am at a loss. Not for words, obviously, as I have plenty for you this morning. No, when this year began with the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term in office as our president I made a decision, and that was to stop trying to work out what motivates him and explains…
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Sound off
I am, by nature, an introvert. I am not shy – nobody would accuse me of that! And I can hold my own at a party or in a crowded room. But when it comes right down to it, I’d rather be alone. And that, I am told, is the indicator. The test. Is ‘alone’…
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Attitudes toward AI
Everybody is talking about “AI” but few know what it is or its implications. My introduction to it has been largely positive. I have had “smart” devices in my apartment for over a year, “controlled” by Alexa from Amazon – though I have configured her to use a man’s voice, so you might say my…
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Orange please
I have already told you of how my life of crime was over before it began thanks to an ill-fated attempt to steal a flashing orange traffic barricade in the dead of night with a bunch of friends when we were teenagers. But that was not my only brush with the law. In my 30s,…
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A brief history of pink
We have a gentleman (ahem!, and I use the term loosely) that works here at my residence who is very enamored with the color pink. I often taunt him about it. And he retaliates by assaulting me with the color any chance he gets. One December, I awoke to find that overnight he had filled…
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50 years of Billy Reed’s
It’s one of those places everybody knows. Locals, obviously. But over the years, I’ve been surprised at how many tourists and visitors to Palm Springs know it. It’s not fancy or high-priced. It doesn’t have a Hollywood backstory, which so many Palm Springs restaurants do – like “Frank Sinatra once tipped his waiter $20,000 here…
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No World AIDS Day in the US
There was a time, when to hear the words “your test results came back positive for HIV” meant “you are going to die – soon.” In the western world, those days are part of the history of the AIDS pandemic, a history so recent that many of us alive today living with HIV can recall…
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Wheelchair Invisibility
I arrived at the furniture store around 11:45 last Sunday morning. I am in the market for a new recliner. A recliner is not just something in which to relax while watching the television for me – it is as essential to my life as breath itself. I can’t walk. I can’t stand up without…
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Family
Back in my 30s I dated a guy named Jojo. He was a Filipino (or Pinoy as they call themselves) from the Philippines who had come to America on a student visa for college, and when he graduated applied for a green card and stayed. As a gay man (and a handsome one at that),…
Your mileage may vary.