A friend is down in Tampa cleaning out the aparment of an elderly lady. She is in her mid-90s and is in an assisted living facility.  He is her advisor and the named executor of her estate.  He said it is a rather depressing job to clean up decades of her stuff.  I asked him how she is doing.  Pretty well, he said, the only thing she cares about is whether her soup is hot.  

I've been very active most of my life and have suffered fractures, ligament issues, hyperextensions, bruises, sprains, etc. I've usually bounced back from these injuries in a relatively short time feeding my body with the right nutrients and careful excercise that have always brought me back to 100%.   This time it's quite different. It's reeeaallly slow and when I push my body a bit it tells me loud and clear "What the hell are you doing?!? Lie down and take a nap...NOW!"  

Did you ever notice in old black-and-white photographs how short the old people are? My mother was under 5 feet tall and my father just over 5 feet.  Thus, it was grounds for rejoicing when I continued to grow into my 20s to my Apogee of 5 feet 9 3/4 inches. Now, however,  approximately a half a century later I have receded to 5'7". It's not so much that I noticed, it's that my sons and grandson continue to point it out saying "I'm taller than you now".

I recently received an email from an art gallery which, for some reason, keeps me on its email list. The email announced the birth of a second child to one of the gallery. The email was replete with pictures of the happy family and newborn baby. I was reminded of a friend who told me that he got his wife to go to baseball games by talking about the players as real people -- families, etc. As his wife became interested in the players as real people, she started going to games.

Just read today that Barack Obama gave Shell Oil the OK to drill for oil in the Arctic. The idea is, not much going on down there and vast reserves of oil and natural gas. How can this be a good thing? How can our government be so out of touch with the natural world? How can they not know the planet is connected?

  So, what do you think? Did Tom Brady deserve to be suspended? If so, how do you feel about 4 games? Did the Patriots deserve the $1 million fine?

I had one of “those” nights the other night. We’ve all had them. As time ticks away my eyes wouldn’t close. I saw 2:00 a.m. pass by and then 3:00 pass by. And, as time continued to tick by, my anxiety about being well rested for my early morning court appearance grew steadily.

The first lines of Dante's classic Inferno, part one of the three part Divine Comedy, are:   "Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark,