It’s always refreshing to me to begin a new year. I sense new possibilities, and the urge to clean out clutter from the year before, although it’s usually a bit daunting to see how much I’ve actually collected, and to begin the task once more. I remember seeing on a friend’s wall an irreverent poster which was completely covered in piles of junk, gadgets, toys, and what-nots. It proclaimed, “He who has the most stuff when he dies, wins, but he is nonetheless dead.” I took tha

Take a deep breath…It’ll all be over soon, but then something else will be happening, and we’re not sure what. There is something I do know, and that is that the American spirit may be ailing, but it’s not dead. It still lives in We the People. And yet, the level of dishonesty, malfeasance, unethical and base behavior, and general corruption among our government’s most powerful, and most self-serving, that we’ve seen, of every political color, has been humiliating at best and

Like flotsam and jetsam we landed in shelters and on doorsteps in places that other people called home – flopping on couches or floors and gratefully accepting the kindness of both strangers and distant friends. Many of us who were St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans area Katrina refugees, had evacuated from homes which were turned into mucky rubble. When we could return home after more than a month, we found that swampy waters had marinated the contents of our homes, wood flo