Collection of opinion columns from original Boomer With a View blog. Sorted from oldest to newest.
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Inauguration Speech
Read more: Inauguration SpeechOriginally published January 21, 2017 Inauguration Day 2017 and the Women’s March the next day may mark the birth of a new spirit of activism in this country. Trump’s speech was at least a wake up call that we ignore his challenge to democratic principles at our peril. I’m reposting this from Facebook because it represents…
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Exclusive Interview: Dylan’s life has been upended by Nobel Prize
Read more: Exclusive Interview: Dylan’s life has been upended by Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Academy shocked the world last fall when they announced that the Prize for Literature was being awarded to songwriter, Bob Dylan, the first American to be so honored since Toni Morrison in 1983. That reaction was mild compared to the one that greeted Dylan’s silence following the announcement. After being skewered in both…
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Aging and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Best Is Yet to Be
Read more: Aging and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Best Is Yet to BeOriginally published April 13, 2017 An article on aging caught my eye the other day and now it will not leave me alone. To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-Year-Old, by the NY Times’s Pagan Kennedy, tells the story of John Goodenough and it is clear his name sells him short. He is a physicist who, at…
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A Health Care-ol, With Apologies to Charles Dickens
Read more: A Health Care-ol, With Apologies to Charles DickensOriginally published April 17, 2017 Donald Trump glanced at his watch as he passed through the cordoned-off press corps gathered to hurl questions at him as he hurried to Marine One. “Mr. President! Are you serious about your threat to withhold health care subsidies as a bargaining chip with Democrats?” “Didn’t you read my book? There’s…
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Our First 100 Days with Donald Trump
Read more: Our First 100 Days with Donald TrumpOriginally published April 23, 2017 If you’ve done anything more than stream Netflix this week, you know we are approaching a milestone. April 29 marks what the French* would call les cents jours du Trump. (Translation: a friggin’ eternity.) The first 100 days of a presidency have become an arbitrarily significant measure of a new administration’s impact.…
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Just Turn the Lights Off: A Trumpian Metaphor
Read more: Just Turn the Lights Off: A Trumpian MetaphorOriginally Published May 11, 2017 If it weren’t happening against the backdrop of a potential Constitutional crisis, it would be humorous. Well, it’s actually kind of humorous anyway. But it is also a perfect metaphor for the Trump administration, as you will see. On Tuesday, in an apparent attempt to match his boss’s classy behavior in notifying Director…
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Avoid Difficult End-of-Life Decisions: Make Them Now
Read more: Avoid Difficult End-of-Life Decisions: Make Them NowOriginally published May 15, 2017 It’s been a quiet week in Lake Trumpbegone. Scanning the news of the last week for anything related to the Donald, I just don’t seem to find anything of significance. Well, there was some FBI flap, North Korea shooting missiles toward Japan, a Kissinger sighting and threats of White House…
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Make America Great At Last
Read more: Make America Great At LastOriginally published May 25, 2017 A sense of our own greatness has always been part of the American psyche. And not without reason. A fresh start in a new land with unexplored but limitless potential. Manifest destiny leading us across a magnificent continent, brimming with resources– and pesky natives. Development of a robust economic engine,…
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Vandals in the White House
Read more: Vandals in the White HouseOriginally published June 2, 2017 There are vandals in the White House. The past fortnight has made it clear. All it took was a little distance for perspective. A revealing trip abroad. A self-satisfied rejection of the Paris climate change accord, infused with contempt for 190 countries. Throw in a dramatic buildup to the announcement scheduled for…
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Letting Trump be Trump
Read more: Letting Trump be TrumpOriginally published October 27, 2017 Ann and I were in Chicago a few years ago, necks craning to admire the buildings being pointed out during the wonderful river cruise conducted by the city’s Architecture Foundation. Gliding past the Tribune Tower, with its splendidly Gothic Revival style, and the brilliant white terra cotta of the iconic…