Columns

In no way do I wish to say all young people are lazy or unmotivated. I’ve met plenty of industrious people from every generation.

Both the college and pro basketball seasons are heating up now with games every day. I was watching my alma mater, Mount St. Joseph University, play Bluffton University and wondering if basketball could draw attention to global hunger. There are numerous countries where starvation is occurring because of wars and climate change.

Inspired by pop legend Neil Sedaka, who is most famous for his 1960 hit song “Calendar Girl,” I love, I love, I love to be a calendar guy, each and every day of the year. And since it’s 2024 already, this can mean only one thing for a geezer like me: Time flies when you’re incoherent.

Toward the end of January, the Pew Research Center published results of a 2023 summer survey it conducted through its American Trends Panel on religious “nones,” people who identify as “atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular.” Out of a targeted sample size of 12,932 U.S. adults, 11,201 participated, resulting in an impressive 87% response rate.

It’s Friday afternoon, somewhere around 4 p.m. in early November. The air is cool, and the sky is blue. Variegated layers of clouds rest above the western horizon — an inviting day for a walk in the woods.

Necessity is the mother of invention, we are told. The recent economy reminds us of how the mother of all hard times, The Great Depression of the 1930s, turned desperate families into hothouses for creativity and imagination. Times were especially challenging for farmers. Even in the best of times, many farm families often lived dangerously close to poverty.

A text arrived saying a dress I ordered online had been delivered to our front porch. And so it had, in a large and heavy box.

As still a part of the work world, I see my share of people pretty much every day in the buildings I’m working, in the occasional hotels in which I stay and in the places I grab a bite, in addition to those I pass when I’m not working. While observing my fellow men and women and their actions, I’ve taken note of some things that may carry a larger message.

I honestly hadn’t thought about the image in a very long time, mercifully. It’s been 12 years since it first hit the internet, and I’m happy to say I — and everyone else — have moved on.

The 2024 election is 280 days away. How can we survive until then? How can we help America survive beyond it?