Wandering Elder

Sometimes there are news stories that point out both the amazing paranoia and fear of our culture while also being able to make us laugh.  Here is what has to be my favorite so far.  It comes from Yahoo Lifestyle and was written by Hope Schreiber.  Enjoy. Bomb threat' at a Home Depot turned out to be a man warning others about how badly he needed to use the restroom   Hope Schreiber, Yahoo Lifestyle   22 hours ago   Police  were called to a Wichita, Kansas  Home Depot  after it was believed that a man was making a bomb threat in the home improvement store. Sedgwick County Communications recently released the 911 audio, in which the caller tells the operator that someone may have made a bomb threat, according to  KWCH . “We just had a customer here made what may have been a bomb threat,” the caller said. “He said, uh, somebody told me there’s a bomb in here and you need to leave the building. He said it three times.” Staff was alerted to the possible “bomb threa

The story of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has been all over the place.  It is not a pleasant story.  It revolves around the picture in the Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook that shows a person wearing blackface and another dressed as a member of the KKK.  Reprehensible stuff. Yet there is an aspect of this story that I have yet to hear discussed.  And that is this: why did the medical school  feel this picture was appropriate to put in a yearbook?  This was not a yearbook from the 30s either.  It was from 1984.  Surely someone along the way would have said, "Is it really a good idea to put this picture in our yearbook?"  Why is no one talking about the corporate  responsibility of this picture?  True, Northam has to deal with this as an individual.  But why aren't we asking about the culture that thought this was (a) an okay event and (b) an okay picture to publish? One of the issues we have to recognize when talking about responsibility and race relations

This past week after Christmas, I was driving around my hometown.  I couldn't help but notice how much was missing from the scenery.  The Sears was closing, the Toys R Us is gone, and there is only one retail book store left.  K-Mart is absent, as is Record Bar (which I have lamented before), and there is nothing even approaching a Blockbuster Video to be seen. Such is life, I suppose.  Things change.  But I began to think about Christmas and Christmas gifts from way back when.  Toys, in particular. Toys were what I looked forward to.  Toy stores  were places of joy and excitement.  Toys R Us was one of many: Circus World, World of Toys, Children's Palace, K B Toys... they all had an excitement and a uniqueness to them. For example, Children's Palace carried a ton of Japanese robots well before Transformers came along.  Shogun Warriors or Godiakin anyone?  Or what about Micronauts?  ROM the Spaceknight?  Even the movie Dune  had some cool toys.  And I remember find