notdonner

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VA Secretary to Newsmax: No Cuts to Veterans' Health Benefits | Newsmax.com

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/va-doug-collins-veterans/2025/02/17/id/1199370/

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valentine for a neurotic dog

My last pair of dogs crossed the ‘Rainbow Bridge’ three years ago. But I still live vicariously through close neighbors with dogs. These dogs are generally quiet and well-adjusted to living inside or outdoors. Their people go to work during the day. But there is a neurotic dog living next door. While still a puppy, that dog’s late middle-aged people faced several family situations. (We all do…

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Finding Hope in a Weary World

Upon waking, I try but often fail to keep the harsh, unpleasant world out of my consciousness. It is a Facebook notification on my phone. Or a “Sale ending soon!” pitch. Or I get an email about something I am asked to remedy soonest for a client. A constant Internet connection and particularly, social media amplifies our inner fears. On some rare occasions, we feel optimism. On the daily…

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Why Are There So Many Abandoned Military Bases in the Bay Area? | KQED

https://www.kqed.org/news/12022479/why-are-there-so-many-abandoned-military-bases-in-the-bay-area

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Fellowship Nights: Strengthening Community Through Food

This past Saturday evening was our first hosting of friends for 2025. Though is it more likely due to giving a month’s advance notice, what seems to make the night well-attended, is me preparing a smoked brisket, pork shoulder or tri-tip. Add the NFL playoff game, and something to make the outside venue a little warmer. Our “fellowship” night in January, over the last four years, have seen lows…

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Sonoma

Sonoma, California was never before a destination in mind. Neither for my parents – while I was a child in the Bay Area – I had been no farther north than Sausalito,  nor during my brief time in port when the Navy ship at the long- closed Naval Station Alameda 32 years ago. Nor had my wife and I come here during our now, more- than-23 years married. Those missed opportunities are now atoned…

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The Road less traveled

A dream I shared with my wife a month ago, of finding myself in a remote desert place seems a metaphor for the sabbatical I have been on away from blogging. A desert is wonderful for aseeking to clear ones mind and as a blogger finding his way. Ironically, this vision was prophetic. Sheri and I spent part of a morning on our road trip wandering a stretch of high desert scrubland east of Mammoth…

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A New Creation

Though I cannot speak for everyone, I presume that most people would opt for a mulligan, or do-over, for many mistakes and poor choices we have faced over the course of our lives. It explains the tens of thousands of self-help books, YouTube videos and courses; and hundreds of thousands of therapists and practitioners of every sort, in vain attempt to re-center ourselves. With a problem humanity…

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Following Christ

For many today, the world we live in is a hostile place. Wars, disease, hatred, abuse, and poverty afflict hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. Though improvements in technology may make some things better, it comes at a cost that enriches some and harms others. Rather than becoming more invested in developing a sense of community, there is often a sense of despair and loneliness.…

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the journey

A dream I shared with my wife this morning, of finding myself in a remote desert place seems a metaphor for this blogger’s online absence. Having no memory of why I lacked the impulse to write these last several months, I can only ascribe this to taking a sabbatical. A desert is a wonderful metaphor for isolation and finding purpose. Like that song by the band America, “A Horse with No Name”, I…

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help, Mr. Peabody!

In many television shows and movies during my childhood, the idea of using a time machine to travel backward was a solution to many problems and answered many questions. The cartoon “Peabody’s Improbable History” featured the adventures of a genius, Mr. Peabody, and his boy, Sherman. They travelled back in history to visit various people who, but for Mr. Peabody, might not have been immortalized…

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On the road

My wife insists that a road trip I am currently enjoying would make an entertaining video. She was intimating that she should have put a camera in the vehicle, so our friends back home could enjoy colorful jabs we were bound to make during the ride. We have made these at each other’s expense for decades. When I first suggested riding along with Russ, I protested to him and my spouse at game…

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for amusement only

Any discussion today about the future of society, in peace or in wartime, or the future of art and entertainment, or scientific discoveries seem to include Artificial Intelligence or AI. Yet just as the ancient Greek story of Prometheus, punished for eternity by giving the secret of fire to mortals, we mortals are hell-bent on discovering and distributing ever-more sophisticated means to curb our…

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old dogs guide for whelps

A brief conversation I had with some high school kids one recent Saturday evening at the Target store might set some direction for their future. Several of their bored peers were roaming the store under the watchful eye of Target Security, while they and I stood in a checkout line. I think they were desperate to deflect the employee’s attention as they were not purchasing anything so the tallest…

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a transcendental dog-man

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Nothing can be more useful to a man than the determination not to be hurried.” Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays In high school, and later exposure in college, I was fascinated by 19th Century philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and…

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Trekking where roosters know not

The guide, All Trails, rates our hike Thursday as “difficult”. However,  this was, for my wife and myself,  our third attempt in 20 years to reach a spectacular waterfall on the Kalaulau Trail. This area along the Na Pali coast on the island of Kauai is a must-see.  Rain and a healthy dose of  “not wanting to die” has prevented us from getting farther than the beach 2 miles into the 11- mile…

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The cocks crow at 1AM

Conversing with your neighbors after midnight is not common. Unless you are a rooster on the island of Kauai. Though my spouse often cautions me about using my “inside” voice in the wee morning hours, this is something lost on these fowl. Any experienced visitor to Kauai knows chickens are endemic here. Escapees decades ago, like the parrots in San Diego County, these birds have made it home and…