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A Broken Promise Under the Golden Arches

When I was a boy of 13 and a new student at a junior high school, I met a girl my age named Amy. She had the body of a woman, fully shaped and ripe with a juicy sexuality that flowed from her pores and her glinting, tawny, eyes — but she was still a girl in spirit and mind.

She was voluptuous, but didn’t yet know it. Amy told me I reminded her of her father — I wasn’t sure if that was an insult or a compliment. She was popular. Boys older than her hovered around her like flies seeking a sweet landing. She spoke to me infrequently, though I often admired her from afar with my first schoolyard crush.

Amy was good in math. At that time, in the red Republican Midwest, females were not encouraged by their families to seek non-traditional paths in school or out of school, so when a girl showed amazing analytical promise in math and the sciences, she was fast-tracked by the school system to deepen her interest and her ability to fully exploit all of her intellectual talents. Amy was leading the school in spirit, heart and mind.

Then she disappeared.

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Should We Challenge Beliefs?

Should we challenge beliefs we do not share, or should we accept the beliefs of others as in situ realities even though beliefs are, by definition, not framed by facts? 

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The Decider: When a Father Fails a Son

There is no greater crushing experience — or necessary duty — than when a father must tell a son he is not good enough; he does not measure up; he is not the man he was born to be:

FATHER: I know you tried, but you did not make the football team.

SON: But Dad! I went to every practice! I did my best! I did everything you and the coach asked.

FATHER: Yes, you did everything you could but it wasn’t enough, son. There are other boys who play ball better than you. You just don’t have the talent. I’m sorry.

SON: You lied to me! You told me I could do anything I wanted if I only tried!

FATHER: You just aren’t good enough to play football but that doesn’t mean we can’t try something else.

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To Live is to Remember: A Brief History of AIDS

HIV and AIDS are infections that still plague the face of the earth even though there are drug treatment therapies that can buy time for those infected.

Without medical intervention and treatment the average incubation period for HIV is 9-10 years and death after a full-blown AIDS diagnosis is still only 9.2 months.

People and their deaths are not best understood on timelines and statistical averages. The value in the human component of living is in remembering those who have suffered and fallen before you.

To live is to remember.

I remember in the mid-to-late 1980’s how this unnamed “Gay disease” we now know as HIV/AIDS was eating people alive. It was a frightening time because no one really knew in a shared, universal societal understanding, how HIV was being transmitted or how AIDS was being contracted.

There were rumors in the mainstream community you could get AIDS — no one really understood the HIV component until years later — by sitting on a toilet seat or by someone sneezing on you or by just shaking hands with an infected person.

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A Badge, a Blood and Orange Bloodshed

Orange, New Jersey Detective Kieran Shields was pronounced dead on Tuesday at University Hospital in Newark. A shotgun blast, aimed from above in an ambush-style slaying, penetrated his neck and shattered his collarbone just missing the protection of his bullet-proof vest.

Badges and Bloods

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