Vernon Windsor's Blog – December 2012 Archive (4)

I ventured out on Christmas eve, something I usually don't do. I had an objective (to try and find something specific), but I realized later I had a secondary objective. I wondered if I could find the Christmas spirit in its deepest sense—not just people being transactionally pleasant to each other because it was in their self-interest monetarily. I needn't have worried. My first stop at a store revealed an older man leaving the building I was going to. He was standing there holding the door… Continue

Watched (or listened to) Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" with everyone from Patrick Stewart to Jonathan Winter in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Having followed politics the past year, the resonances and parallels to current times were undeniable. I've come to the conclusion that we have way too many people playing that Scrooge role in real life.

History is what happens, or more likely, what we tell ourselves happens. Some events are easy to look up, document and analyze. Others, not so much. As I have lived my own life, I've often mused on why I seem to forget some things, or some truths that I really should remember. Why do humans have to learn so many things "the hard way?" Here we are, once again, as a nation, shaking our heads and trying to deal with the aftermath of yet another mass shooting. After all the similar incidents…

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Republicans failed to ratify the United Nations treaty to protect the disabled around the world. A majority of Republican senators voted against Americans and others with disabilities, including US veterans by failing to ratify the measure which was based on US law. Bob Dole, who came to the senate floor after a recent hospital stay, was present in the chamber to watch the majority of his own party fail to ratify a treaty which would support Senator Dole's dignity and that of others with…

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