I don’t hate Trump supporters.

I wish I could.

It sure would be easier than this awful swirl of emotions I cannot even put into a word.

I wish you could see what I see, what I’ve seen the past five years, what I see now. Maybe you could set aside five minutes and consider the world from my viewpoint.

I am no stranger to Donald J. Trump. I was an addict of The Apprentice show for years. It taught me things about marketing and business. I loved the competitive element. I even auditioned to be a contestant on Season…

We live in record-breaking times, and doesn’t everybody want to tell you that. Record-breaking low temperatures caused by polar vortex, most powerful storm in 100 years, largest drop in stock market value since year whatever, smallest GDP since some other date, longest shutdown … it goes on and on and on.

For me the biggest problem with the swirl of hyperbole is this — I feel like I have to compete. I feel like I need to have more, be more, be the best, be the brightest, and succeed the most. And you know what? I’m tired. I’ve made quests…

In the moment, it’s hard to see what’s real and what isn’t. “Gaslighting” does that to you. Sometimes the best remedy is to revisit history to regain our bearings, in this case, to remind ourselves what Donald J. Trump really believes about elections.

The presidential elections in 2016 and 2020 were both hotly contested and both major party candidates were controversial in their own ways. How the candidates, or their supporters, handled the results has some stark contrasts, however.

On November 8, 2016, over 150 million votes were cast, the media predicted a winner, and the loser graciously offered her…

Martin Niemöller was a national conservative, a Protestant pastor, who welcomed Adolf Hitler’s assumption of power. He thought he was part of a national revival. He learned how wrong he was, and how insidious the process towards hell. He wrote an oft cited poem about what happened next which you should read, and post on your wall. I have rewritten his words as I see their applicability today.

First they came for the Muslims

And I did not speak out

Because I am not a Muslim

Then they came for the gays, the lesbians, the transgender

And I did not…

There’s a saying among writers that there is nothing new, all writing is just a spinoff from an earlier story, or idea, or writing, and there is some truth to that. Writers often incorporate not only a feel of previously created work, but specific reference to them. The characters in a book may perform a Shakespearean play, some hit song may be playing on the radio, a well-known poem may be hanging on a protaganist’s wall. There are unending varieties of these references.

How much can you reference someone else’s work, however, before it become plagiarism or copyright infringement? …

Some days it seems Americans are more divided than ever, with no hope of coming together as a united nation on any topic. I think we are underselling ourselves, and I also think there are at least three things we can all incorporate into our day-to-day interactions to make things better.

Give voice to your moderate views, and exercise restraint on the rest

The protests and unrest following George Floyd’s death created a bit of a dilemma for many of us. Black Lives Matter (and many other groups and individuals before them) have documented and pointed out policing practices that…

I love writing. I always have. I have ideas for books, article, stories, spewing out of my head practically 24/7. But something happened when I started posting stories online. When I started my first blog I had access to some rudimentary analytics that showed me how many people were reading my articles and from where. It was so cool! There were the predictable places, where I lived, where I had friends and family who knew about my fledgling blog. But there were other places, remote and exotic. People I had no connection to were reading what I wrote.

It’s addictive…

For me, it started with the invention of the salad bar, the option to choose what I wanted, and pass on things I didn’t. I was probably 12 years old the first time I encountered a salad bar at a church conference. Up until then, my mom made salad with ingredients of her choice, salad dressing of her choice, all tossed together before it got to the dinner table. It didn’t matter that I hated green onions and cherry tomatoes. I ate what was put in front of me. …