From a distance, from our new perch atop vast archives of electronic information afforded us via the Internet, we can begin to understand current events such as this more clearly than ever. The real trick, though, will always be the ability to sift through all that information and put things in their proper perspective.
In this age of new media, we can all be web publishers and as such we must treasure our freedom or lose it. With freedom come responsibilities: We should identify ourselves and our sources of information. We should verify the accuracy of our information. We should also use discretion and good taste.
In the Land of the Smiling Billboards, cutouts of celebrities as tall as buildings wear truck-size grins to beckon tourists to their shows ...
Fresh from a fervent assembly designed to pump up the sales force, my 10-year-old son got in the car after school and declared his new goal in life, to be Top Seller . . .
Published in 1961, the book details the insanities surrounding an Army Air Corps bombardier stationed off the coast of Italy in World War II. The novel by Joseph Heller is fictitious but speaks volumes about contradictions in our society then and now. But you probably already knew that, having not had trendy '70s mini courses in your school curriculum. That my father also flew on bombing missions in Italy for two years during World War II makes the book to me altogether more personally vital because my father rarely speaks of those days.
Sometimes a universal truth is crystallized in a moment.
How much now I wish I would have offered him some small bit of encouragement that night, no matter how awkward I felt about it.
Raising your children in a small town has many advantages. But when tragedies occur, it's almost always someone you know. Statistics and headlines are never just another story. It's a neighbor's daughter. A classmate's parents. A friend's son. Tragedies are magnified.
Before the ENIAC computer was programmed by these women during World War II, the task of calculating ballistics trajectories was accomplished by hand by a group of 80 female mathematicians.
Freedom rings clearest when its notes are discordant and especially when they're politically incorrect. To me the beauty of the First Amendment -- "make no law" -- is its simplicity. But, like children, we can't seem to understand that "no" means "no." It's time we grew up and embraced the personal responsibilities of the hard-won freedoms we have so comfortably inherited.
