Thinking about us

Oct. 14, 2009: I’ve been a bit caught up in my own little worries these days, and in thinking about how the way we live is Simply not good enough. It’s a little uncomfortable to constantly find myself to be the easiest example to cite for the kind of inadequacies I wish we all would worker harder to overcome. Indulge me for a moment while I atone for the latest slip.

Simply not good enough

Half a lifetime ago, I wrote about the day I lied (twice) to a panhandler about being able to give him the money he was begging for. That day, I had just come out of the local pool hall where I had been spending money to drink and play games.

Looking on the bright side

Today is “Be Glad to Be Alive Day.” Yesterday’s post, and my mood of late, have been too gloomy, a little too resigned for my taste. I don’t like surrender or the feeling of weakness. It is a measure of my illness that it saps my get-up-and-keep-going.

How are ya, 5-0?

I’ve been on this rock in the void for 50 years now, and it’s feeling especially cold this turn around.

Who Needs Health

What passes for health care discussion these days is enough to make you sick.

The prevalent sound bites in fact have almost nothing to do with health care and are instead a guide to greed and selfishness in an ever-escalating battle of “my ox will be gored more than yours.”

The question that matters on health care is, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Mixed signals

Ah, for the days of energy and discipline, when I could sit down and pop off an essay, a tall tale or just a journal entry in a few short minutes. Not only could I do it, but I insisted on doing it, because words are my favorite toys and thoughts are my favorite games. An examined life is the only life, and sharing the results of the examinations is a kind of bursting forth in song.

Better together

Sixty years ago today, on May 28, 1949, William Herbert Oakley married Edna Marie Dudding. He was a handsome, jovial fellow, one of the lucky ones to come back unscarred from World War II, now in the early days of his career at The Buffalo News. She was a determined country girl, following her oldest sister out of the mountains of Virginia to greater opportunity in the big city by the lake.

And now the news

They say to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. In “A study in contradictions,” I wrote that I thought newspapers were dying of blandness, parroting falsehoods from spin machines and no longer doing the hard digging and taking a strong stand for truth. A couple of comments on the piece require followup.

A study in contradictions

Rest in peace, Rocky Mountain News. Fare well on your Web-only way, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All hail, absent friends, though we hardly knew ye.

The tough times and declining readership of the newspaper industry grow ever worse. Many folks cling to the hope that Joe Average will always want something to hold in his hands to read in the bathroom, but I think the handwriting (and the hypertext) is on the wall. The day is coming when your wall or your phone or a microphone or earpiece will feed you the news even as you put the plumbing to use.

I need a shrug

Snap out of it, a wise friend advises over the phone. He read “On not writing well” and encourages me by agreeing that “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” is the correct response.

The trick is not in knowing the answer, but in acting on it.