I love America. I love the freedoms bestowed upon me as an American citizen, freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and its 27 Amendments. As much as I love America, that is how much I dislike the selfish way too many Americans interpret our freedoms such that they consider themselves entitled and refuse to be considerate …
Category Archives: Awe and Wonder
Lessons from Grackle
We have many birds in our neighborhood and one of the most popular is the Great-tailed Grackle. Like all birds, they rise exactly 30 minutes prior to sunrise, and I hear them throughout the day and see them on the adobe walls in my backyard. Last week, Mrs. tVM saw a nest in our neighbor’s …
Making Lincoln Smile
I find it less easy to be critical of young people since my return to the desert. The kids in my neighborhood – a healthy mix from varied cultural backgrounds – are energetic, openly friendly and polite, and seem to spend less time fixed to video screens than I have become accustomed to. Early in …
About Dogs, God and Politics
In my quirky novella with its even quirkier title The Sixth Day, a 17,175-Page Novella About Creation and Prizefighting, I suggested that God should have quit creating after he made his perfect creation, the dog. I feel more strongly about it today in an America where partisan politics strangle the common man and attempt to …
Amazing Stories from the Desert: Project Corona
I have recently been hawking the authentic picture of Bigfoot my wife captured on film during a recent hike in the Casa Grande Mountains. No takers. Go figure. Yesterday, I hiked the North Picacho Mountains searching for petroglyphs with my friends Chuck and Kurt. While we found a treasure trove of petroglyphs, the highlight had …
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If You Have a Father
If you have a father, if you have had a father, if you are a father… the list could go on. Without a doubt, you are on the list. If you are – which you are – you are obligated to watch “The Sparrow.” It is a mere 5 1/2 minutes. Nearly a two decades …
Fortuitously Serendipitous
Fortuitous and serendipitous. Two of my favorite words. The one, happening by chance; the other, occurring by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Regardless of word choice, I am fortuitously and serendipitously lucky to be living in the home that found me and Mrs. tVM across the street from the Highland Manor Park when …
Orangemen
There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jim Boeheim and the Syracuse Men’s Basketball Team. Growing up in basketball-crazed Massachusetts during the Red Auerbach, Bill Russell and John Havlicek days of the Boston Celtics, I followed Jim Boeheim and Dave Bing during their playing years at Syracuse, and I returned to …
The Continuing Case for Exercise
The ‘Well-Being’ post from last week was foremost in my mind as Mrs. tVM and I hiked up the Casa Grande Mountain Radio Tower Trail his morning. A mere 2-mile out-and-back hike, we stopped to catch our breath more than once. You see, over the 1-mile hike to the summit, one climbs 994 feet. That …
Saints
“The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation