Installment 1 — Well-spoken — for a tongue-tied newborn — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) How does one begin an “About Me” story? Not with “I was born on… at ….” Ugh! Not with “I am an accomplished lawyer, now retired.” Boring! Not with “I am a gay Baby Boomer.” …

Grace, kindness, and empathy — Bring some degree of grace, kindness, and empathy to the lives you touch When I was in trial practice in Philadelphia, I had the great good fortune of working in Dick’s firm, one of the city’s keenest legal minds. He was a difficult person to work for. He was not only demanding in his expectations but also could be quite caustic, even cruel…

I’d search for the secret of self-windingness — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) This is a response to one of Caitlin McColl’s “What if…” series, “What if…You Had Unlimited Resources And A Year To Search For One Single Thing?” I’d search for the secret of self-windingness What is the secret of self-windingness?¹ What makes it worth the search? It is…

“I was ecstatic. Love flooded the Milky Way. My joy knew no boundaries” — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) On 28 April 1995, I lost my soulmate, partner, best friend, and accomplice in mischief to complications from AIDS. This is an excerpt from my memoir, “An Odyssey of Remembrances,” recounting the events of that day after the mortuary attendants…

Think Stevie Ray Vaughan meets Carlos Montoya — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) This is a response to one of Caitlin McColl’s “What if…” series, “What if…you could play any instrument like an expert?” I wouldn’t settle for just one, but if I had to, it’d be the guitar Well, first off, I wouldn’t be satisfied with just one; I’d want to play five, the violin, cello, piano…

Only they can save it from the fractured body politic and climate disaster we hand them — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) We, the Baby Boomers (the most numerous generational cohort until the Millennials) and Gen X, have taken the America delivered to us in the 1950s and 1960s by the Greatest Generation, the greatest realization of the American Dream, and destroyed…

Pretending the influx of undocumented immigrants is an “invasion” he has authority to “repel” — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) In a tweet, Texas Governor Greg Abbott purported to invoke the U.S. Constitution, Article IV, §4, clause 3, providing “The United States … shall protect each [state] against Invasion,” on 15 November 2022. He also invoked a similar provision of…

Installment 2 — One person, three personas — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.)

Elon Musk spurns civic responsibility in favor of profit — (Not a Medium member? Click to read this story, gratis.) Through its Starlink services, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, has been providing Ukraine with critical satellite communications capabilities including shipping multitudes of Starlink terminals to Ukraine for military use on the ground, according to a Musk tweet last February. Now, Musk…