There is something uplifting about watching creative artists like sculptors and painters at work. How they take raw materials that have no shape or beauty of their own and then use them to bring to reality the vision that existed just in their minds, is something that fills me with wonder. Just take a look at this piece of art where every single part of it is made entirely out of blown glass.
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When you live in a single area long enough, you notice changes in the environment and one significant one in my area is the shifting of retail centers. When we moved here in 1989, it was the era of the large indoor shopping mall. The Randall Park mall nearby was, when it opened in 1976, the largest in the country, and its opening was graced by the presence of many celebrities. We used to go there regularly and the holiday season would see it packed with attractions for children like little trains.
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Here’s wishing all the blog’s readers a happy holiday season from Baxter the Wonder Dog and me.
I have noticed that at some point when you try to point out to people that the wars they support (such as the US waging war all over the world or Israel unleashing assaults on Gaza) lead to the deaths of large numbers of innocent people, these people will sometimes resort to the cliché that “War is hell”.
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It has become routine to find out that virulent anti-gay pastors turn out to closeted gays themselves. It has happened so many times that I would not have bothered to comment on this latest episode of a pastor soliciting sex at a public place except for the fact that in this case the pastor’s first name is ‘Gaylard’.
Like most people who have never served any time in jail, I have no idea what prison life is like. What one sees in films is likely to be highly exaggerated and thus unreliable. Daniel Genis, who spent a little more than ten years in prison, says that what characterizes prison is the large amount of leisure time that one has and what one does to combat the sheer boredom.
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Now that the season for college football bowl games and championship tournaments is underway, raising interest in college foot ball to a high pitch, I want to revisit a college football scandal that has been bothering me. While the Penn State sexual abuse scandal was a high water mark of how big college sports programs corrupt almost everything it touches, there are other abuses that are less high profile. One that is endemic, especially at those colleges with big sports programs, is the pressure to let athletes slide by academically with lower expectations in order for them to retain their eligibility.
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Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the day Baxter the Wonder Dog joined our family. The first photo was taken two days after his arrival when he was just a puppy and the one below is a more recent one, after he took charge of the place.
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Readers must have heard about the case of Heather Cho, a senior Korean Air executive who, on a flight from New York to Seoul, was enraged when the purser (the flight crew chief) served her nuts the wrong way (in a bag and not in a dish) as the plane left the gate and headed for the runway.
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International governing bodies like FIFA for soccer and the IOC for the Olympics are notorious for their corruption and the arrogance and greed of its executives. The Olympic games may have gone too far in its demands for perks to consider nations to host its winter games because countries are not stepping forward to make offers.
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