A Layman's Look

I was flying recently and as we were banking during the initial ascent I was able to look out of the window at the city with its skyscraper-abundant skyline getting further and further away.  Suddenly a suburb came into view and I noticed that the tallest structure was unmistakably a church steeple and was reminded of something I read years ago.  I don't remember who wrote it, but the gist of it went something like this: The Gospel of Matthew tells us "where your treasure is, there will your heart be, also."  For centuries before the Industrial Revolution, the largest building in any city or town would have most likely been the church.  It was the central meeting place.  The citizens came together and gave their money to build large, beautiful churches, edifices to stand as a testament to the importance of that faith in their lives.  The people might not have had much, but they spent their treasure to build those churches because it was so important to th...

I just wrote this letter to Rachel Maddow. Hi Rachel, and her team, (Disclaimer: I wanted to write something shorter and more to the point, but this wound up being shaped in my mind like one of your A-blocks, with a somewhat-random-and-seemingly-out-of-the-blue starting point that comes around to underscore the point that is being crafted for the end just before the break.  Please understand that as you start this.) While I love to laugh and know the value of laughter to help us through tough times, I have been frustrated on occasion with the laughter that happens on any number of news shows when describing our illustrious President's behavior.  Don't get me wrong, I understand that things are so bizarre for normal, rational people that it seems uncomfortable and inconceivable that someone would act the way he acts, and so we laugh.  However, it is my opinion and belief that serious times and serious actions call for serious people and serious responses.  ...

Here's just my thoughts about the exchange rate for the currency pair.  It seems to me that the low around 1.057 was a failed fifth wave after a long sideways trend.  From the 1.057 mark, I think we're headed up over a long, multi-year trend.  The question is, "What is about to happen from 1.117?" I think there are two options.  Option one is that 1.057-1.099 was the first leg and we're in the third leg now, which would mean moving upwards towards 1.15.  The other possibility, and what I fear is the probable scenario is the move from 1.057 to 1.124 is wave one and we're now in a correction for wave two that will bring us back down to around 1.08.  That would also fit nicely into the gap of the close of 4/21 and the open on 4/24.  We'll see, but I think that's where we're headed next.  After that, it would be off towards 1.18 or higher. Only time will tell.

I just saw a beautiful image of the Lincoln Monument at night.  It is so majestic, and such a wonderful monument to a fallen leader who held this country together by sheer will during the Civil War.  It got me to thinking if today's government would see fit to memorialize a fallen leader, military or civilian, in such a magnificent way.  Then I had to ask myself the question, "Do we have such monumental leaders today?  Where have they gone?" I realize leaders such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. only come along once every several generations.  The question still lingers in my mind, though.  Do we have such monumental leaders in our midst today?  If they are, it seems to me that they are needed.  Will they step into the spotlight?  Can you, can I, provide a smaller version of that leadership in the corner of the world in which we find ourselves?

I got to sit for about an hour this morning and listen to the discussion between President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and two moderators in Berlin during the German Kirchentag (Church Day).  It was wonderful to hear them answer questions in such a thoughtful and deliberate way.  They touched on refugees, wealth disparity, separation of church and state, conflicts between different religious ideas, and much more. A statement by the Chancellor struck me in a particularly deep way.  She said, "My freedom is not unlimited.  It is, indeed, limited by the freedoms of the people around me." Think about that for a minute. We Americans love to talk about our freedoms and our rights.  These are wonderful things, and yet we forget that they are, indeed, limited.  We have a certain sense of privilege as a nation, and the trick for us, as I see it at this point, is to learn anew how to respect the freedoms and rights of those around us and to see the impact ...

In most families with kids, the siblings fight.  Throughout their lives there are dust-ups, disagreements, falling outs, and brawls, unless the parents are able to calm the older sibling and keep them from killing the younger (thanks Mom and Dad for not letting my annoying ways cause my untimely demise!). What happens, though, when the school bully or the mean kid from around the corner harasses the younger sibling?  Right, generally speaking the older sibling will come to the defense of the younger because blood is thicker than water.  It's what you do.  It's what's right.  It's what's expected. I have a theory that our political parties have been like those un-harassed siblings since the end of the cold war.  Republicans have been wedgied by Democrats, and Democrats have been nuggied by Republicans.  There's been short-sheeting of the beds, saran-wrapping of the toilets, and each has left the constituents of the other party left to be picked last...

In case you missed it, a major turning point in the movie Frozen  is the song "Let it Go".  It is during this song where Elsa literally takes off the gloves and lets her special power come out.  What results is spectacular.  While she still feels strange or dangerous, it is at this time that she starts to at least be able to grapple with the reality of what she can do and she begins learning how to harness the power that she has.  I feel like Hillary Clinton needs to embrace what she really is at this point, a failed and defeated presidential candidate, and let it go. I won't go into the myriad reasons people enumerate as to why Clinton lost the presidency.  You can find those on YouTube or the nightly news archives.  What I will say is that it is my opinion that, though Hillary's presence on TV talking about likely Russian involvement in the election, the sexism she feels is still alive and well, or any other perceived reason she was defeated might ...