Daily Blues & Views

 Lines Two lines diverged in my neighborhood. I'm thankful I only frequent one.  Line 1 appears on Sunday mornings.  My wife and I never miss dutifully taking our place in this one.  We leave or home about 9:20 and walk a few blocks to what she has deemed the "Bread Church."  No house of worship, we wait patiently for the opening of a bakery that appeared shortly after the pandemic.  This sacred place sells bread by subscription during the week, but on Sundays the door opens to a wonderland of other baked goods.  My favorite is the olive twist a spiral shaped roll laced with  three kinds of whole olives.  They are usually still warm when we get them.  Katie likes the cherry buckwheat scones best.  But there are so many other things to choose from.  Last week we saw marionberry hand pies, molasses cake, oat raspberry scones, and mushroom gruyere slabs.  The breads are composed of a variety of local grains, sunflower rye, tr...

 Seems like political demonstrations are an everyday thing now.  When a democracy is at stake, this should be the norm. It's got me thinking back to the days of the late 1960s when that was also the case.  As US involvement in Vietnam became increasingly unpopular, the opportunities to protest became frequent and the number of people involved grew exponentially as well. In November of 1969 the largest political demonstration in US history took place in Washington DC.  Called the Vietnam Moratorium, as estimated 500,000 people took to the street.  This event took place over two days, a Friday night and the following Saturday.  I was there.  This experience was probably the most significant thing (of which I'm aware) I have ever done.   While the Saturday march and rally featured speakers and musicians, and a march through the streets of Washington, the smaller march the night before is what I remember most.  On a rainy night, about 100,000 peo...

 Whenever I hear a politician say, "this is not a racist country," two things happen.  First I wonder who they might be (usually a Republican) to make such a ridiculous statement.  Either they never studied US history, or they have lived an incredibly sheltered life.   My first 20 years on this planet were spent in relatively all-white neighborhoods.  I was aware of other nationalities through the Latino, Black, and Asian populations that surrounded my neighborhood.  To be sure we had diverse groups in my school and community, but for the most part, everyone and everything was white.  I idolized Black baseball players as a kid, but even then I had little knowledge of the context in which they played and the unwritten rules they were subject to.   In college I studied US history and because of the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, I ended up majoring in African American history.  Reading books about the brutality of slavery and the autobiographies ...

 Recently I've noticed a new habit when I go to the grocery store.  I lift something off the shelf, look at it for a second, consider the price, and then put it back.  These days I simply don't want to pay $8 for a small jar of pickles, or $3.99 a pound for apples.  And i have a steady income.  I shudder to think how people on a real tight budget do it.  Most folks know that with few exceptions, prices rarely go lower once they hit new highs.  With the exception of gas, or eggs, every rise in price remains true. There is no percentage in reminiscing about the good old days when a quart of milk was a quarter and a loaf of bread was anywhere 50 cents and a dollar.  Gasoline used to be 25 cents a gallon and when we were fortunate enough to spot a "gas war" it could fall to 15 cents.   I know I'm only fooling myself when I return an item to the shelf.  Still, it feels empowering sometimes and I soon realize I can get along just fine without ...

                                      -The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved                                            in return                                                                    From the song Nature Boy recorded by Nat                                                       King Cole 1948       I first saw her across a crowded room. But...

Donald Trump has secured his name on another building. Too bad it's a vacant structure, but then that never bothered him. The US Institute of Peace, gutted and then destroyed by the DOGE deluge now reads the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. What a joke. All his bloviating and whining about wanting a Peace prize finally paid off. What he'll do with this defunct institution is anybody's guess. In a recent roundtable discussion by political pundits on CNN this topic came up. After mostly agreeing that Trump is aching for some sort peace prize, the discussion finally focused on what the US Institute for Peace actually was, and that it didn't really do much. I take exception t that...strongly. About 25 years ago I spent a few weeks in Washington DC as a member of a summer institute for educations sponsored by the US Institute of Peace. Had I been part of that roundtable discussion I'd have informed those present what I was doing there and what was accomplishe...