Tag: society

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Dylan’s Words Echo Still


Bob Dylan wrote “When the Ship Comes In” in 1963 and released it on his “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” album in 1964. Dylan was in an angry mood when he wrote the song after a hotel clerk refused him a room, thinking the artist was a deadbeat. Dylan finally scored a room after Joan Baez verified his good character. The song is violent and vengeful, but it is also hopeful. The song’s lyrics hint at a vision of a better world built on the ideals of an enlightened generation.

Sixty years have passed since the song first appeared. Aside from a more inclusive social fabric and our ever-advancing technology, I wonder if the times have changed that much. Dylan’s words still ring true in a world where:

  • The cruel and inhuman war in Ukraine rages on.
  • The leading Republican candidate faces numerous indictments for fraud and other misdeeds.
  • The US President’s son faces charges of selling access to his father, and the President may be implicated.
  • Selfish Aramco raises oil prices despite the devastating effect it will have on the world economy.
  • Oil companies make token gestures toward clean energy while sitting on their hands and raking in hundreds of billions in profits from the sale of fossil fuels.
  • Billions of people continue to live under dictatorships and go to bed hungry every night.
  • The clock is running out on Global Warming.

We need the social conscience and action of a generation of young people like the one we had in the sixties. Instead, we have a malaise of complacency and ignorance today with too few bright spots in between. But it’s not too late. “When the Ship Comes In” came to me in a dream. It came, literally, from out of nowhere. It must have come to me for a reason. Maybe Dylan’s resounding words will spark something in us. Here’s my cover.

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Essays humor international issues life Making Changes musings reflections

Can We Make Fewer Babies?


All this talk about overpopulation is finally beginning to hit home. Lately, it seems like almost everywhere I go, hordes of people come crawling out of the woodwork.

It’s really becoming annoying. Take, for example, a trip to the mall. You have to use a slide rule to calculate the ideal time to go, to avoid peak hour pedestrian traffic trampling you underfoot.

At the rate the world population is growing, many of us will have to consider living on another planet in some distant galaxy.  It won’t be long before scientists discover a suitable planet to colonize and they build a faster-than-light-speed spacecraft to take us there. I’m going to make sure my retirement account is healthy enough to buy a one-way ticket for me and my family to make the journey.

Starting over, however, is not going to be easy.  There won’t be any NFL or NBA games to watch, golf to play, books to read, or computer games to play—save the ones we take with us.  My wife and daughter will miss Lifetime, Housewives, nail salons, and shopping malls, to mention only a few life staples, before civilization reasserts itself.

How did we get ourselves into this situation? According to an actuarial study commissioned by the US Social Security Service, life expectancy has increased by 28 years for men and 26 years for women from 1900 to 2001. According to the same study, this is due to several factors:

• Access to primary medical care for the general population

• Improved healthcare provided to mothers and babies

• Availability of immunizations

• Improvements in motor vehicle safety

• Clean water supply and waste removal

• Safer and more nutritious foods

• Rapid rate of growth in the general standard of living

I’d like to add one more item to this list: Thanks to medical science, people are living longer. In my humble opinion, some people are living longer than they should. Please allow me to explain.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a cancer center waiting for a vitamin B-12 shot and thanking God I don’t have cancer. I see people shuffle in, many in their eighties and nineties, supported by walkers and canes, wearing bandages, heads bent, half asleep. You have to feel sorry for these people while praying you don’t wind up like them.

Certainly, cancer has many causes, but one of them is simply the aging process. We reach a point where our immune system grows too feeble to protect us. At this point, the party is over. We become like AIDS patients before the curative cocktail, with nothing to look forward to but one disease after another.

Yet people hang on, thanks to the wonders of medical science, hoping life will one day be worth living again. Maybe that day will come when full-body transplants become available. If this doesn’t happen in the next ten or twenty years, I hope I will have the wisdom to know when it’s time to gracefully exit stage right (or left.) To put it another way, to have the courtesy to make room for someone else and stop contributing to escalating healthcare costs.

In the meantime, I’ll go on meditating, exercising and pursuing the interests that make me feel happy-from-the-heart. And for the sake of EVERYONE’S quality of life, can we PLEASE be a little more conscious by making fewer babies?

Planet Colonization
Planet Colonization

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Essays humor inspiration life Making Changes memories motivation reflections Uncategorized

The Not-So-Hidden-Truth About Starbucks


I am trying to write my second novel.  It is not easy, to say the least.  I am confident, however, that this is a universal truth among authors attempting to write their first or seventy-first long piece of fiction or non-fiction.  The reasons for this difficulty may vary from author to author.  My main roadblock seems to be the increasing disenchantment of sitting in a room all by myself for long periods of time.  Again, I suspect I am not alone in this predicament.  The problem apparently extends far beyond the relatively small segment of the population on planet earth attempting to write novels.  I know this because I have recently taken my laptop to a local Starbucks to resolve my isolation problem.

The Starbucks I now regularly inhabit is not your everyday Starbucks. Management recently retrofitted the place with long tables, benches actually, with stools and a strip of electrical outlets underneath to plug in battery cables.  Droves of people come here, not just to chat and caffeinate, but to do WORK! This includes college-students doing real, actual homework, not wasting time on Facebook.  Freelance, self- employed, and independent contractor types also hang out here.  These people, like myself, are hard at work, despite the distractions of noisy conversation and often-times idiotic, piped-in music.  I find this phenomenal and wonder,”Why do we come here?”  Many, if not all of us, are surely not homeless.

I can only speak for myself.  I come here to overcome loneliness—to make some sort of connection.  And I’m happy to report that my new strategy is paying off.  I’m writing my novel on a regular basis, slowly but surely.

Now that we may have some insight into the reason for the overwhelming success of the Starbucks chain, I would like to come to the point of this piece.  Many years ago, I began listening to Prem Rawat speak about an inner experience of peace and contentment.  At the time, I did not have to go to Starbucks to be around people.  I had a full time, good-paying job, a girlfriend, my parents and cousins to surround me.  Yet, something was missing.

Mr. Rawat’s message of peace captivated me in a way nothing had previously.  I followed up on his promise to reveal a source of peace and contentment within myself.  I practiced the techniques of what he calls Knowledge, and, to make a long story short, I have not been in the least bit disappointed.  Well, perhaps that statement is not entirely true.  I had the idea shortly after receiving the techniques of Knowledge that I would not need anything else, including people.  To make another long story short, that idea turned out to be foolish and a bit funny, now that I look back on it.

But there is a point here, somewhere.  Oh yes, here it is:  I need outer connections—with colleagues in my chosen profession, with friends and family, even Facebook connections. Thanks to the experience of Knowledge, I’ve learned that I need something else.  I need a connection with myself for my life to be complete.  I’m not going to put a name to what I’ll call “myself,” because I’ve learned that names are insufficient to describe it.  I will just say this:  I was looking for a missing piece of the puzzle of my life.  Prem Rawat helped me to find it.  Now, I feel my life is complete.  It is full, not stuffed with things on the outside, but from within.  And my connections on the outside are more fulfilling, because I am a more full and complete person, with more to offer to others.

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humor life musings reflections

Chicken Necks


Why would anyone want to be in the same room as a chicken neck, much less eat one? Consider the shape of a chicken neck, for starters. Does it remind you of a piece of cow intestine, or a giant snail without the shell — or maybe a biceps muscle severed from the bone? Now imagine one of these succulent items simmering in a saucepan flanked by mushrooms, carrots and celery. Add pepper if you like. Hold the salt—it comes with.

In China, chicken necks are a delicacy. This, no doubt, is a direct result of the overabundance of Chinese people and a perennial shortage of food in the country to feed them. In addition to the Chinese, dogs and pigs enjoy chicken necks as a regular staple. Cats, on the other hand, are much too dignified to eat them.

Here’s a thought. It’s entirely possible chicken necks could become a popular dish in America. If the banks fail, we might all find ourselves homeless, grilling chicken necks on street corners surrounded by the few sticks of furniture left over from the foreclosure sale.

If you are wondering what chicken necks taste like, please ask someone else. If, however, we turned out to be the last two people on the planet due to a natural disaster, I might hazard a guess. In such a case, I would be in the unenviable position of the sole remaining authority on chicken necks. It would be my duty, out of human decency, to attempt some sort of an answer. After considerable thought, I’d say chicken necks probably taste like dark meat chicken—very stringy, dark meat chicken accented with a gristly texture. They might also taste a bit like stuffed derma, a Jewish folk dish I have only seen but never eaten. On second thought, stuffed derma probably tastes like ice cream cake compared to a fried or boiled chicken neck. I can’t really be sure of this because I never summoned the courage to ask what stuffed derma is made of. As far as the smell of chicken necks is concerned, let’s not even go there. We’ll just say that chicken necks don’t smell. They stink.

If you are the curious, adventurous, or self-loathing type, you may wake up one morning with an uncontrolable urge to experience the taste of a chicken neck. To these people I offer one final word of advice. Chicken necks may taste better in a strong chicken or meat broth. Remember, this is only an assumption. If you must try a chicken neck, you do so at your own risk. Please also note that a serving of chicken necks will provide you with a decent amount of vitamin A. The idea that they are a good source of vitamin C is, sadly, only a rumor.