Thinking in Public: Shopping for urgent care
If I were to give my job a title, it might be "assistant head of household." I don't work outside the home and my income is hardly worth mentioning compared to that of the boss.
Thinking in Public: Sticks, stones and strollers
The old adage that "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you" should now be filed in the archives, along with "actions speak louder than words." Both sayings seem obsolete.
Thinking in Public: My best friends
It was a fenced-in high school ball field. The gate swung open and I went in, closing the gate behind me and the dog. From the pitcher's mound, I gave the fence lines a quick inspection without seeing any dog-size breaks or open gates, then I unsnapped the lead from Mac's collar.
Thinking in Public: Tell me if you’ve heard this
My world has gotten a whole lot noisier. Some routine happenings are downright deafening and lots of things that were silent are no longer. I can hear the ticking of the ship's clock on the wall and the cycling of the fridge.
Thinking in Public: The aftermath
The roads are wonderfully quiet with winter traffic now. Some days I can walk to the post office and back, at noon, without having a single vehicle drive by.
Thinking in Public: Home, sweet home
We get calls all the time from low-life scammers who have just enough of our information to start a conversation, but not enough to separate us from our common sense.
Thinking in Public: The world is a curtain-twitching busybody
I was speaking to a service advisor at a well-known local car dealership regarding an annoying problem with my truck. Different from problems that are not annoying, such as those of routine maintenance and repair of wear parts, this one had shown up a week before as a glitch in the "Driver Information Center."
Thinking in Public: Rex, Red, and chicken feathers
So many topics from which to choose this month. Do I go with the tragedy in Lewiston or the indescribable beauty of the next morning's sunrise? The carnage in Israel or the discovery that chicken feathers can replace PFAS chemicals in renewable hydrogen fuel cells?
Thinking in Public: Let’s go to town
Nearly every week we spend time with a couple of like-minded folks who suffer my public behavior as though it were normal. By like-minded, I mean we mostly drive to town in search of some cheap food in an atmosphere quiet enough to have an actual conversation about our doctor visits.
Thinking in Public: The art of a non-artist
The subject of art is an interesting thing. What to one person is an inspired demonstration of the mixing of vision, movement, emotion, perspective, imagination, color palette, and freedom from objectivity is to another person a 6-year-old's prized finger painting.
