by Gary | Sep 26, 2019 |
Earlier this year, my darling wife S. and I enjoyed a delightful and educational voyage in the eastern Mediterranean, which culminated in a four-day tour of Israel. Yes, I know that four days isn’t long enough to work through the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle, much less understand a country with as complex a history as Israel… or is it Palestine, or maybe the Promised Land, or possibly Canaan, or even Judah? You see what it I mean. It’s complex before I even begin. Before I start, and in a nod towards full disclosure, you should know that my genealogy consultant informed me some years ago that my long ago antecedents were most probably...
by Gary | May 22, 2019 |
Admit it. You have no idea where Malta is or even what it is. The words Maltese Falcon may ring a bell faintly, but that’s about it, and that puts you right in there with the rest of the world. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t associated with the wonderful British candy Malt Teasers, nor was it related to that great novel and film noir, The Maltese Falcon. That’s one of the reasons I selected this cruise. I had never been there. Not only had I never been there, I had only a vague notion of where it was. Nor had I ever been to Ephesus, Sicily, or Cyprus, which all were on the itinerary. And given the fact that I’m approaching or...
by Gary | Mar 6, 2019 |
…Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able to? Then he is not omnipotent. …Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. …Is he both willing and able? Then whence cometh evil? Then why call him god? ~ Epicurus (341-271 B.C.E.) ~ I couldn’t have said it better myself. There have been many others who proposed their own formulation, and there may have been some who said it earlier, but none have said it better than old Epicurus. Epicurus and other like-minded philosophers have bedeviled Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers for millennia. First a short sidebar on Epicurus: Epicurus was a Greek philosopher in the image...
by Gary | Feb 22, 2019 |
To borrow corruptly from the Bard, “A wall by any other name would still be a wall.” Whether a barrier, a fence (barbed wired or not), circles of razor wire, steel slats, stone, hog panels, rock, solid cement, a line (as in the Maginot Line), with or without turrets and machine gun emplacements… it’s still a wall. I know, you’re as sick as of hearing about “the wall” as I am, and probably you’re as confused as I am about whether and how much wall we have, whether and how much wall is currently under construction, whether and how effective it is, whether there is a need for more wall, how much it would cost, and...
by Gary | Jan 2, 2019 |
If you were surprised by the killing and dissection of Jamal Khashoggi by representatives of the government of Saudi Arabia, you have not been paying attention. Execution by beheading has been the preferred method of ridding the Kingdom of its undesirables for decades if not centuries. Even today, through the first four months of 2018, at least 48 souls have been dispatched to the great hereafter by the Saudi authorities wielding swords, often carried out in the town square at 9:00 in the morning. They are now working on their technique of executing multiple beheadings simultaneously. I guess this is what counts for progress in The Kingdom. And what were...
by Gary | Jul 21, 2017 |
I never really thought much about the land…the land from which we draw sustenance. I know that most of us have a connection through our ancestors. Somewhere in our lineage are those who at some time or other have scratched a living from the land, but few of us have actually pulled a cultivator behind a tractor to prepare a field for planting or even mowed a pasture. Until I retired from the corporate world, my connection to the land was tenuous at best. As a restless teenager, I used to visit an aunt and uncle in the panhandle of Texas who were honest-to-god cotton farmers. They lived in a small frame house just north of Lubbock; some irrigation...
