Ramblings of a Retired Mind

Sunday Thought: How to Begin the Mending? Ten steps ROBERT REICH JUL 5     Friends, Okay, we’ve now gone through the bitter-sweet 250th anniversary. Now let’s get to work.  Every day brings more news of Trump’s greed, incompetence, cruelty, and criminality. Raking in $2.2 billion in his first year in office, much of it siphoned off from taxpayers and gullible followers. His Iran debacle. His malignant narcissism, putting his face and name everywhere. His cruel mass deportations. His use of the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he feels has wronged him. And so on.  As journalist Tom Edsall writes, “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.” I think it important to separate the loathsomeness of Trump as a person from the horrendous things he’s doing. Trump won’t change, but we can begin seeking changes in our system to prevent such awfulness in the future — especially if/wh...

  “Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “It is man’s intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. ... Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.” Aldous Huxley

​ “The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” Albert Camus 

  “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

 “In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” Edith Wharton

  “We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.” Charlie Chaplin

  “The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools?” Henrik Ibsen

  “Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist’s need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.” Dr. Donald W. Black

  “Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.” Ray Bradbury

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind You are wrong, I am right, even if I am wrong   Yesterday, I was minding my own business in the right lane when a car veered in front of me from the left—zero turn signal. The urge to honk or extend a specific finger was overwhelming. Instead, I chose peace, breathed deep, and turned up the radio. Moments later, a massive pickup truck came flying down the left lane. Before I could even think, where’s a cop when you need one? The truck cut hard into the right lane, cutting off my original offender. Clearly, turn signals are a lost art form. The best part? The first driver, the one who had just cut me off, was absolutely furious. He lay on his horn, completely blind to the irony. It perfectly captures the new normal: "Rules for thee, but not for me." We see this hypocritical projection in politics every day, where everyone accuses the opposition of the exact dastardly things they are doing themselves. I don't know when this became...

  “Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.” Michel de Montaigne

​ “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” C. S. Lewis

​ “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” André Gide 

  "I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom." Umberto Eco, from Foucault's Pendulum

  “There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.” Isaac Asimov

​ We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.”   Arthur Schopenhauer

  “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” Smedley Butler

  “I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.” Romain Rolland

  “If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”   Albert Camus

 “Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.” Douglas Adams

  “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

  “Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.” Douglas Adams

 “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” Bertrand Russell

                                                                             Ramblings of a Retired Mind Angel Smoke The scent was unmistakable. Being hypersensitive to every shift in the air, I recognized it immediately, that crisp, biting aroma of burning leaves in early December. It felt nostalgic until it didn't. At the front of the room, Sister Mary sighed, her mind already drifting toward a quiet cup of tea. Only one hour of school remained. But the smoke began to cling to the inside of my nostrils, a persistent, sharp irritation. "Sister Mary, what is that smell?" Before she could answer, three students burst in from the library, faces pale. "Sister Mary, there’s smoke in the hallway!" No alarms. No warnings. Sister Mary peered into the corrido...

The writers group I belong to has come up with a name for ourselves: Writers Out West — or WOW! I've designed a logo for the group, and I hope everyone loves it!

  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: 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 from the furnaces...

                                           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...

  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...

  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. ...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  Ramblings of a Retired Mind Time Where has the time gone? How did it get this late already? Where did the day go? Time, as the saying goes, waits for no one. Theories That Hurt My Head There are, broadly speaking, three theories of time: realist, relational, and idealist . The realist view holds that time is a physical thing— time is relative , tied to space, just as Einstein described. The idea that time slows as speed increases is fascinating, but also enough to give me a migraine, so let’s not linger there too long. The relational view suggests that time depends on the sequence of physical events in the universe. In an empty universe, time wouldn’t exist at all. Where the realist says the universe has a clock, the relationalist says the universe is a clock. Thinking about who—or what—started that clock brings on a dull ache along the top and sides of my head, so it’s probably best to move on. That leaves the idealist view, which claims time is a construct of the...

Ramblings of a Retired Mind Say it Enough  Yesterday, we witnessed yet another American tragedy of our own making. A mother. A daughter. A friend. Renee Good lost her life during a confrontation with federal ICE agents. Almost immediately, the federal administration moved to define the event on its own terms—casting the victim as the villain and shaping a narrative that aligned neatly with its worldview. We have seen this before. History Has a Way of Repeating Itself On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University, four student protesters—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Schroeder—were shot and killed when twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war in Southeast Asia. Sixty-seven rounds were fired in thirteen seconds. Nine others were wounded but survived—an often-forgotten fact. Though eight guardsmen were charged with violating civil rights, all were acquitted. The Nixon administration quickly blamed the student...