Columns

Have you ever had something happen to you that was just completely unexplainable? I’ve a had a few, but usually they’ve been sort of silly, innocuous events that simply made me shake my head. For instance, I once returned home from school on a bright spring day, got out of my car, and walked to my front door carrying my backpack and stuff. When I got to the door I reached in my pocket to get my keys and they weren’t there.

My Auntie Jo gave me a beautiful pair of gloves yesterday. They are elegant, with embroidery on the top, and I immediately did what I usually do — I put them away for safekeeping.

It happened back in the late ’70s, and I’ve never been able to explain it. The strangeness, the surrealness of it all, I can still feel it today. Because it’s such an odd story I’ve only told a few people about it. I didn’t want folks to think I was, you know, cuckoo or something. Bottom line it happened, and I’m sure there was a reasonable explanation for it. Still, it haunts me.

On Thursday night, President Biden said that we as a nation are at an inflection point. He invoked a famous phrase from the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he said the United States must be “the arsenal of democracy.”

I have always loved Halloween, and I love it now more than ever.

Editor’s note — This is the second part of a two-part column.

To this day I can’t recall who came up with the idea. It very well could have been yours truly, although God knows there are plenty of other likely and worthy suspects.

At the end of the Second World War there was really only one “Superpower” in the world, the United States. Today’s world is strikingly different. Economics and technology have changed the map. From the standpoint of power and influence, strategically, it’s now a multipolar world.

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness.

Yeah, I know. Another old guy yammering about the old days. Well, it’s my site and I can yammer all I want. You ain’t the boss of me. I wrote about the pros and cons of technology in my critically acclaimed work The Pros and Cons of Technology, and a lot of what you’re about to read relates to that.