My Back Pages

My Back Pages: School Days, and This Old Man.. :    Dedicated to the Memory of Marvin Bookbinder: A dedicated educator, and a really decent, caring man. Mr. Bookbinder, I'm so sorry t...

   Dedicated to the Memory of Marvin Bookbinder: A dedicated educator, and a really decent, caring man. Mr. Bookbinder, I'm so sorry that I failed you  I have to admit, I love doing bitstrips; those little cartoons on facebook that let you make your avatar for them and adjust the situations and the captions to suit yourself. They give you the basic cartoon, you finish it. I like to draw on my life, and usually kid my wife in the process. Usually, I make myself the butt of her (fictional) biting and sarcastic wit.   Yesterday, I found one that actually almost fit what happened to me in real life, and it caused a great deal of controversy and facebook talk. Here's the cartoon:                                                                                                                     Now, I had no intention of putting down guidance councilors, or teachers, or the school system. I have nothing but the utmost respect for educators and all that they try to do. Desp

My Back Pages: Solving Problems, and Mindset Needed : While lying in bed this morning, sometime around 04:00 AM, I started thinking about the state of things in America and the rest of the wor...

While lying in bed this morning, sometime around 04:00 AM, I started thinking about the state of things in America and the rest of the world and it occurred to me that the problem is that we have stagnated. We seem to be constantly at odds with one another about what direction to go in, and instead of moving, we just sit with our wheels spinning. In fact, our wheels no longer even spin because we are so mired in the morass of one ideology versus another. While our supplies of fuel continually dwindle, nothing has been done in any significant way to either replace or supplement the fuels that we have. Our current demands burn up supplies with abandon, and while we are not in a crisis mode yet, make no mistake about it, we one day will be. What to do, what to do?   I must ask: Where are the movers and shakers today that will lead us from this darkness into a new era of light? Where are the voices inspiring the young men and women of today to take chances and search for answers to this

My Back Pages: The Old Man and the Hat(s) : When I was a boy, my friends and I were ambiguous about hats. The hats that our mothers insisted that we wear on cold Winter days had very...

When I was a boy, my friends and I were ambiguous about hats. The hats that our mothers insisted that we wear on cold Winter days had very little to do with fashion or style. Rather, they were supposed to keep our heads warm and keep our ears from getting frost-bitten. If you know anyone who has pictures from these days in the '50s and early '60s, you know exactly what I am talking about. As we grew older, we discovered hats with what we thought was style: usually a short brimmed Fedora with a feather. Truth be known, we looked ridiculous, but we thought we were very cool!    I remember the wide brimmed hats that my father and my uncles wore in the '50s. They were always pulled down over the forehead, and usually worn with a dark overcoat, giving them all the look of gangsters out of a Cagney movie. To me, though, they looked funny.   Politicians of the day all wore hats: Ike, Truman... even Lyndon Johnson, although by the time he became President, Fedoras, Homburgs and

My Back Pages: Aging.... Gracefully? : I was reading an article on line the other day and came across a paragraph that focused on 'Baby Boomers' (I hate that title), and i...

I was reading an article on line the other day and came across a paragraph that focused on 'Baby Boomers' (I hate that title), and it said that some of us were elderly. Curious, I looked up 'Elderly' to find out at what age one becomes elderly, and was shocked to find that I passed that milestone two years ago!  How could this be? My mind is still sharp, even if my eyes aren't. My wit is nimble, even if my body isn't. This just could not be true, I told myself. So, I searched several more times, and each time came back with the same result.... I'm elderly. I was stunned. Then, I started to think about aging, and what we have been led to believe we were going to be in for, as opposed to the truth. My conclusion is that we have been led down the garden path to smell the roses, and instead have become lost in the woods.   We have been told all of our lives that we will grow old gracefully. Ha! Let me tell you, for most of us, there is nothing graceful about