Everyone has a story of why voting matters.

If you don’t vote, you are writing someone else’s story.

Today voting matters to me because we in the United States of America have been given a gift that many people never get, the right to put our needs on the record, to have a say in how our society works.

I vote because so many people are denied that right.

I vote to remove the barriers to voting, because there are still many of our own fellow citizens who are kept from voting.

I vote because if my candidate loses my…

A two part essay on re-entering society and reclaiming rights.

It is said that there are only so many plots, no truly new stories.

The parable of saving one starfish is the age old story of the underdog.

You know, the one about a child on a beach filled with starfish, washed up, dying. As she’s throwing one back into the ocean a grown up passing by asks “Why bother, they’re all going to die?”

“It matters to this one” she says as she tosses a starfish back to where it can survive.

Is the underdog the starfish or the…

When a critical number of people see a problem, some start seeing an answer.

This essay has to start with a shout out to one of my favorite urban legends/intellectual theories — The Hundredth Monkey Effect. In short, this is a reference to a 1950’s research study of monkeys, which produced a theory that once a critical number of members of a group (in this case 100 monkeys) has learned a new behavior, that behavior will be acquired spontaneously by other groups of monkeys, despite being separated by great distances. …

China and the Unites States are in the midst of trade negotiations. There are China-Europe and China-Everywhere-else-in-the-world negotiations going on as well. There is a long and complex history which illuminates the differences, striking or nuanced, between the players.

Here is one small piece of that history.

In 1911 Eva and Albert Dunlap*, just married, left America for Shanghai, China. Albert a doctor of otolaryngology, and recent graduate of Harvard medical school was part of a group of fellow graduates and others who were on an adventure to establish a medical college in China**. In their 40 plus years in…

Whatever is coming next is opportunity for success in ways you haven’t imagined yet.

Happy New Year 2019! Many have said goodbye and good riddance to 2018. I can empathize. Done with that, I now reclaim my perspective on what is important and gets me moving on the projects I want to see come to fruition in the new year.

2018 (perhaps the year or two before as well) has been all about leadership in the USA managing our fears. Well, the country reclaiming can wait — it’s time to take our perspective back! (FDR we need you!)

So to…

The Founding Fathers understood that to protect themselves from each other
they had to agree to protect each other from themselves.

The foundation of the US Constitution comes down to the Golden Rule, treat others as you want to be treated. In virtually every Article and Amendment there is language expressing a compromise or protection which prevents (or at least slows) one citizen’s interests from hurting another ’s interests.

Our Constitution, a non-complimentary response to opportunism

Our forebears designed our constitution after being colonial citizens of a monarchy that had 2 denominations of Christianity (Catholic and Church of England) at…

A consumer’s perspective on health insurance cost vs health care value.

Once upon a time in America there were Industrial and Gilded Ages. Wealthy men organized the means of production and the labor to run it. Jobs were offered that provided wages and a place to live near the factories and mills. The owner of the factory would have a store on site, in the company town, where all residents would buy all food and other items needed for their households. This was the Company Store.

Wages were paid as vouchers for goods at the Company Store. Workers could not…

Ed is a working guy and was an on-the-road serviceman for 30 years, first with Southland Corporation (7–11), then 25 years with a chemical company where he designed, installed and maintained chemical pumping systems. In his mid-forties he was laid off. This was at the end of the housing bubble as the economy was going into recession. He got his contractor’s license and became a self-employed handyman. With his wide skill set he soon had a regular clientele.

When you work for someone else, health insurance is usually available. Ed had worked for big corporations and that was part of…