Daily Blues & Views

 Sometimes it does seem as if we are every age we’ve ever been. When the Fire dept. showed up at my neighborhood “Safer Together” block party and let all the kids climb over their shiny red engine, I  regressed to a 9-year-old. Watch me catch a fish and I’m 12 again. Watching a baseball game with the Giants playing I become all ages. But in the last few decades of our lives, something decidedly different occurs. Expression of those differences becomes problematic. Having spent the better part of my life as a high school teacher, I am comfortable around young people, especially adolescents.  Consequently, I often acknowledge them when walking in public, forgetting sometimes that they don’t think of me as a familiar, albeit trusted teacher they know. When that happens, I get either no response, a cold eye roll, or a rapid look away. Being perceived as a threat or inappropriate may be the last thing on my mind, but it frequently happens. In fact, it seems lately that most pe...

 It's hard not to live in the past these days.  At the risk of pining for the good old days, I miss more and more some of the things I previously thought would always be there.  Newspapers, for example.  Not only do we not rely on them for news,  I have come to call my local paper the $3.00 crossword puzzle.  Now, I could argue for retaining local and national papers,  but most of the people who would benefit from that argument would never read or hear of it.  At some point, all of us over 50 have faced the reality that technology has mapped out our future and left many of the familiar and favorite things we came to depend on in its wake.  But at what cost? People seem distracted and speedy these days.  That might explain why I see so many people drive right through Stop signs.  One of the streets in my neighborhood almost requires drivers with a clear right of way to slow to a stop when they come to a corner where side streets have...