The Lonesome Death of Civil Discourse

Civil discourse didn’t die with a bang—it bled out quietly, while most of us were busy yelling at each other online. I felt it this past summer on a family trip to Port Aransas, walking along the beach with my 11-year-old daughter. She pointed to a line of pickup trucks flying political flags, most of them…

The Death of the Political Middle Ground

I think that’s a wrap, folks. The good old days of friendly political discourse have disappeared quicker than the American middle class. Gone are the times when most of us could disagree and debate in a civil manner, regardless of which side of the aisle our preferred political heroes happened to sit. Now, we much…

We Were Friends, Me and This Old Man

When I was home on leave, we would sit together and swap army stories. We were the only military veterans in my family, with the exception of my paternal grandfather who was a navigator on a bomber in the Pacific theater during WWII. But he died when I was young, maybe ten or eleven.
I called the old man Papo, a name that came from my inability to say “grandpa” as a two year old. It stuck. To all of his grandkids after me, he would be known as Papo. His real name was Richard Lee Wills, Sr.

A Nation of Apes and their Silly War on Cannabis: An American Fable

“The legalization of marijuana is not a dangerous experiment – the prohibition is the experiment, and it has failed dramatically, with millions of victims all around the world.”– Sebastian Marincolo Once upon a time, there was a land inhabited by intelligent creatures called Apes. They called their land a Nation. And this Nation was a…

Watching Gaza Burn From The International Space Station

Alexander Gerst has been observing the violence in Gaza from a distance—a distance of 205 miles. The German astronaut, currently aboard the International Space Station, sent out a tweet yesterday describing what he called “my saddest photo yet.” How strange—and depressing—it is that a human who has traveled to space through the wonders of science,…