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The Heat

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  The heat was oppressive — no surprise, it was July. No relief. There were showers, but it was not water that flowed from their pipes. Crammed together, whimpers climbing the wooden walls, no escape. Hope lost for some, ready to go, ready for the relief that only death could bring. Thoughts went to the apartment in Warsaw — not a mansion, just a three-room third-floor walk-up. Cold water to cool oneself. How one missed those simple things, the things we all took for granted. The smells of cooking swirling up the stairs: onions, cabbage, meat. One could never tell from the aroma what kind of meat was cooking. Here, in the now, there is no doubt. How this heat crushes the soul — stripped of humanity, stripped of a future. There were days I begged to be taken. I would catch my reflection in the window and not recognize myself: a poor waif, beads of sweat dripping down a shaved head, hollow eyes staring back. I prayed for a breeze, only to recoil as the wind carried the smell fr...
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The Pot of Gold

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                                           Ramblings of a Retired Mind                                                The Pot of Gold As the rain began to let up, hope stirred in me. Today, I thought, could finally be the day. Since moving to Polson and settling onto our lot with its ever-changing mountain views, we've grown to love the vivid rainbows that follow a good storm. But we'd been waiting for the one. The full, sweeping arch that a sky like this deserves. Back in the Chicago suburbs, rainbows were more rumor than reality. With houses fifteen feet apart and trees crowding every sightline, you might catch a whisper of color through the branches, but never the arc. Never the whole thing. This is a special day, a d...
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Nasty

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  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Nasty I have been thinking about the word nasty for the past few days. At some point in life, everyone encounters a nasty person. What troubles me is that over the past decade, we as a society seem to have grown more tolerant—perhaps even more accepting—of nasty behavior. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that it is acceptable for someone to behave badly so long as their nastiness is not directed at us. It is self-preservation in its purest form. We look the other way. Sometimes we even applaud it. In the arts, we have long rewarded those who make a living by being nasty. Comedians, for example, often stand before paying audiences and hurl insults at the very people who came to be entertained—laughing all the way to the bank. Don Rickles comes to mind. Those who knew him personally insist it was all an act, that he was, in fact, a warm and caring man. That may well be true. Still, it is easier to appreciate the performance when you are not...
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You know you should

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  Ramblings of a Retired Mind You Know You Should We all fall into this at one time or another. We stumble onto a new “must-watch” television series, fall in love with it, want more of it, and want everyone we know to watch it too. Inevitably, when speaking with relatives or close friends, the subject turns to our latest obsession — a movie, a series, something we simply can’t stop talking about. I am 100% guilty of this. Over and over again. If we are honest with ourselves, we realize that part of it is the desire to belong. We want to be part of the “in crowd.” No one wants to be the outlier, the person who doesn’t get the reference. So we proclaim to anyone within earshot, “You have to watch this!” Of course, this behavior isn’t limited to movies or television. It extends to music — the new artist we’ve discovered or the obscure performer from forty years ago we have suddenly unearthed and now feel compelled to introduce to everyone we know. Books are another arena entirely. ...
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Hold my Hand

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  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Hold My Hand Moving after retirement isn’t something most people do lightly—especially when you’ve lived in the same place for nearly your entire life. Yet that’s exactly what my wife, her twin sister, and I did. We left the northern suburbs of Chicago and moved to western Montana. And yes, plenty of people thought we were crazy. Leaving Everything We Knew All of our friends were in Chicago. Most of our relatives were there too—including those who now rest there. My wife and her sister had never lived anywhere else. Aside from a two-year stint in Stamford, Connecticut, neither had I. We had lived in our home for thirty-five years. Thirty-five years of memories. Thirty-five years of accumulated “stuff.” Letting go of a third of what we owned was both freeing and painful. We also had a cabin in Galena, Illinois, which we ultimately decided to sell, furnished and ready for someone else’s memories. Our house sold the day before it officially hit th...
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“I Know I Am, But What Are You?”

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  Ramblings of a Retired Mind “I Know I Am, But What Are You?” Since I was twelve years old, I have had little tolerance for hypocrisy. The word itself comes from the Greek hypokritēs , meaning "actor" or "stage performer". In the New Testament, it described those who outwardly displayed religious virtue while inwardly being insincere — people who wore a moral mask while living by entirely different standards. Even as a child, something about that unsettled me. What once felt like youthful outrage has matured into a deeply rooted conviction: integrity matters. Pretending to be something you are not — especially in matters of faith, morality, or justice — does real harm. It erodes trust. It distorts truth. It weakens institutions. And today, hypocrisy feels less like an exception and more like the status quo. We see it when leaders preach love while practicing exclusion. We see it when officials dismiss science until it becomes politically convenient to embrac...
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An Ethical Will

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  Ramblings of a Retired Mind An Ethical Will A message of love, values, and legacy In our faith, there is a tradition known as an Ethical Will — a letter of the heart, written not to distribute possessions, but to pass on values, lessons, love, and blessings to those we leave behind. In recent years, I have spent time reflecting on my own life and on the lives of my children and grandchildren. Those reflections brought me back to a short letter my father left for me to find after his passing. That letter was brief, but it was powerful. My father wanted me to know how proud he was of the man I had become. He wanted me to know that although he was gone, he hoped that, in some way, he would still be watching over his grandchildren and over my wife and me. He wrote about the lessons he had learned in his life and about the importance of living with honesty, truth, and loyalty to the ideals of our faith. The letter was written after the passing of my mother, his wife of forty-eigh...
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