Author: Thomas Walters

The events of early January, nay the events of the preceding two months or since the November election, have sent unfortunately mixed messages about what democracy stands for.  Maybe even that it doesn’t always work.  But the military didn’t seize power.  The protesters eventually went home. They weren’t gunned down on the steps of the capitol, but several hundred have been invited back to answer for their actions. Democracy, embedded in our society, has and will continue to triumph, despite the best efforts of some, lately Republicans to show their true intentions.  Congress came back and completed its mission – to certify the election results.  The transition happened two weeks later.  But we can ask ourselves, with shaking heads, what are the optics of a sitting president stirring up a crowd followed by images of him sitting watching the events unfold on television with a smile on his face, until presumably one or two of his legal team suggested it could be problematic? Then, he issued a half-hearted response.  Really?  The rest of the world was more outraged than some Americans. This the way we do things in the world’s most potent democracy?

Continue reading “Torn from the Headlines Yet Again – the Optics of Politics”

As I was preparing our taxes and filing our taxes this week, along with Her Ladyship’s conversation with our friend, Lady Peacock about her taxes, it seems an appropriate time to go back in time long ago, to a period we thought ripe with prosperity and good will. February, 2020.  Here are excerpts from that blog, along with a couple of strategic revisions and updates.

Continue reading “Tax Time in a Pandemic”

There’s a most amusing series of commercials for an insurance company, in which a gentleman runs seminars whose purpose is to prevent young home buyers from turning into their parents.  They’re really very funny.  In one, they’re guessing at the correct pronunciation for “quinoa”, and in others, he admonishes “You got up early. Nobody cares.” and “The waiter doesn’t need to know your name”.  There’s a stage at which we all turn into our parents, sometimes not in our thirties or forties, but for better or for worse, it will happen.  Her Ladyship and I are well into that stage.  

Continue reading “Turning Into Our Parents”

Her Ladyship is an inveterate watcher of “The Price Is Right”, and make no mistake, it’s a great and classic show.  However, does it make great television to have the contestants jumping up and down and around the stage, screaming at the top of their lungs, flailing arms?  Does this add to the excitement of the show?  Is this why people watch?  And if that’s why people watch, what does it say about a) the content of the game and b) the caliber of viewers they’re attracting? 

Continue reading “The Price is LOUD”

Yes, goodbye to “chubby” and “full figured”. For quite some time now, I’ve just thought of myself as, well, portly.  It’s a nicer way of slightly more than my ideal weight.  A comedian once remarked years ago, “I’m not overweight, I’m just short.  For my weight, I should be 11 feet tall.”  Here all this time, I thought that quality eating – as in “healthy appetite” – coupled with an irregular, one might say sporadic, exercise regimen was to blame.  Nay, nay. If television commercials are to be believed, and I have no reason to believe that folks in advertising would deliberately mislead us, I’m a victim of “insulin resistance”.  Yes (arm thrusting skyward)!  Now a dignified, professional condition for why my middle section has been, shall we say, out of proportion to the rest of me.  

Continue reading “Goodbye to “Chubby””

Particularly in this pandemic year, when life is abnormal anyway, with all of the added stress and worry about getting together or not, getting gifts to the right destinations, and remaining safely sequestered through the holidays, to say nothing about sending and receiving Christmas cards and yearly communications, watching “Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Holiday Inn” yet again, it’s time to regroup, take a deep breath, and resume sleeping nights.

Continue reading “Post-holiday Letdown 2021”

We as Americans are so sorry that you, citizens of the world, had to witness the spectacle of our electoral process under fire, and more importantly that you had to see Americans whose behavior is completely unacceptable.  That’s what it was, people completely out of control, an unbridled mob.  Completely unacceptable and contemptible.  

Continue reading “An Apology to the World”

Yes, yes, I know, we all make them.  Most of us break them.  We start out with the best of intentions. This will be the breakthrough year that we follow up and through.  Until some moment in January, when, as the carol, “In The Bleak Midwinter” suggests, so too goes our willpower, our resolve, and our determination.  Some of our loftier ambitions, to be totally honest, dissolve somewhere between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve.  For example, I’m cutting back on sweets.  But wait, there are still some Christmas cookies to be . . . . .  I’m going to get more exercise . . . . . but wait, it’s rather chilly and windy outside today and I might hit an ice patch.  Better take the car to fetch the mail.  It might be warmer tomorrow and I can start then.

Continue reading “New Year’s Resolutions: Aiming High”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen.  Today is the day, and we’re bringing you moment by moment events of the great Christmas Cookie Bake, 2020.  It’s as if you are right here, watching the excitement from your homes.  We’re taking you into the tent with Paul and Pru. The lists of possibilities has been pared down to only the eight or ten favorites.  

Continue reading “Great Christmas Cookie Bake 2020”

This is a big item in many households.  Her Ladyship grew up in a climate of, shall we say, “heightened anticipation” about gift giving, both Christmas and birthday.  In our house, my brother was the investigator, leading to the nickname, “Snoopy” and my mother placing his Christmas presents at a neighbor’s house almost until Christmas eve.  Otherwise, it was certain that he’d find them.  He got it from our grandfather, who, as I mentioned in a previous blog, emerged several days ahead of Christmas from their bedroom closet wearing the gloves and reading the book my grandmother was giving him.  

Continue reading “Christmas Gift Surprises”