IT HAS BEEN A WHILE

It has been a while since my last post.  You get caught in the stress of trying to survive.

My income dropped precipitously in this wonderful free market economy, not that it was substantial to start.  Then at the end of the year my brother committed suicide.  I will never fully comprehend his reasons.

The past year has seen the increase of racial tensions in the United States, or perhaps they just became more obvious.  We had the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the choking death of Eric Garner in New York City.  Both victims were African-American males killed by white cops.  There has been a constant stream of stories of abuse of African-Americans by the police since then.

Terrorism, particularly by fundamentalist members of Islam, has rocked the world.  We've had beheadings of captives.  We had the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.  We've had people slaughtered in Nigeria.  We're in the twentieth century, but we could be in the Middle Ages in terms of our progress.  We have people with Medieval beliefs who possess modern weapons.