If you want to see our real place in the world, it may make you feel insignificant. It’s all around us, but never more than in our American treasure, our national parks. We recently got back from spending a few days visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. The majesty of nature is overwhelming. It’s as if you traveling back thousands of years when the earth was first forming. You’re struck by the enormity of the rocks and cliffs that envelop you, and the colors. The greens, browns, grays, and most of all the reds. The reds range from a deep rust to coral. The texture of the stone has gradations from smooth to ridges that look like they were created by a baker putting the finishing touches on the icing of a wedding cake.

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We all remember where we were on 9/11. We didn’t know where we were going. What would happen next? How it would change us forever. In these days leading up to the twentieth anniversary, we are seeing all those indelible images again and hearing the stories of heroism, grief, determination, and anger. Some have compared the 9/11 attacks to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was an attack by a foreign country on a naval base thousands of miles away that most Americans had never heard of before that terrible morning. It brought the country together. We knew who the enemy was. There was no debate about how we needed to respond. After four years, the enemy was defeated. We won and the world changed forever. There was that same rallying spirit right after 9/11. We were going to hunt down the people who did this and make them pay. This was worse than Pearl Harbor. This unknown enemy struck in the heart of our country killing innocent civilians as they showed up for work. That morning would change how we saw each other.

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One of the primary responsibilities of journalists is to ask questions to get information to inform the public on a particular subject. This applies whether you’re asking the local school president about the school budget or elected officials about government policy including national security. The American military evacuation of Afghanistan has raised many obvious questions about the planning and consequences of the Biden administration’s decision to end the twenty year war. While most people agree with the decision to get out, the execution of the withdrawal has been badly bungled for all the world to see. There are many questions about the plan, the intelligence, the warnings, the preparedness of the Afghan military and the government itself. When things aren’t going well, people try to avoid answering hard questions.

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The debate over the Covid 19 vaccines as been going on since the vaccines became available earlier this year. It has ramped up since the virus mutated into the Delta variant which is much more contagious and can even be caught and spread by vaccinated people. The rare vaccinated person who tests positive does not get seriously ill, but they can spread the virus to the unvaccinated person who can get very ill and die. Every medical expert has told us from the beginning that getting the vaccine would stop the spread of the virus and allow us to get our lives back. But a significant percentage of the population has refused to get vaccinated, and now holds the rest of us hostage. To quote Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” It’s time to take back the country from the idiots and the people who are feeding them self serving misinformation.

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Everything is always bigger and better in Texas. At least, that’s what Texans think. Well if you haven’t been paying attention, it’s becoming the most dangerous place in America. It’s run by stark raving Republicans who have been elected by the people, so the majority of people in Texas support what’s going on there. The danger is that Texas is leading a pack of other Republican run states that are trying to manipulate democracy to keep them in power and exclude or trample on the rights of people they feel are a threat to their conservative, and some would say, racist views.

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Memorial Day is the day we remember those who died for our country. While it commemorates the end of their lives, it evolved into the unofficial first day of a summer, an odd mix of somber and happy. As we seem to have finally gotten Covid under control, everyone is looking forward to the sunshine. But there are dark political divisions that seem to have grown deeper during the year of Covid and the defeat of Trump. Because the Republicans still believe the “Big Lie” of the stolen election, they are on a nationwide campaign to restrict our right to vote. Even though there has been repeated proof from election officials and the courts that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It’s been called the most secure in history. Republicans didn’t like losing and they want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

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We live in a world of short attention spans. Even texts have been reduced to emojis. Get to the point. But you wouldn’t know that if you listen to broadcast news on radio and television. Remember those? The digital generation isn’t listening. Having grown up watching and working in boardcast journalism, I even get impatient with the sin of redundancy. Writing that’s lazy and overdone. Simple declarative sentences are being littered with unnecessary adjective and adverbs.

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It was a beautiful spring day. My wife Maureen and I went up to the borough of Doylestown, Pennsylvania for an outdoor lunch and some shopping. Doylestown is a typical suburban small town with many restaurants, bars, shops and a long history. Before heading home, we stopped at our favorite coffee shop. As we settled down at one of the sidewalk tables, I noticed a guy coming out of the shop and sitting on a bench just a few feet away. He had a gun on each hip. I could only see the handles sticking up from the holsters tucked inside his belt. One had a white handle, one a darker handle. He looked to be in his mid-30s, glasses, hair parted down the middle. He started talking with an older guy wearing an Eagles sweatshirt at another table. I could hear some of the conversation about the lockdowns over Covid. They were calm and seemed to be enjoying the day as we were. I asked Maureen to turn around slowly and see what I saw. She said she was uncomfortable. I agreed. We left. Welcome to America.

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On December 14, 2012 we started to get reports into our newsroom that there was a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. First reports were unclear about how many people were shot. Newtown was close enough to Philadelphia for us to send a reporter and camera crew if this was developing into a mass shooting. One of our reporters who had worked in Hartford was on vacation near the school. She called me and asked if we knew about the shooting. I told her we did, but we’re waiting for more information about how bad it was. She said she would see what see could find out and call back. She called back shortly and said she talked with an old police contact. He told her, “It’s bad.” As we all know, it was very bad. Twenty children between six and seven years old and six adult staff members were slaughtered by a 20 year man with severe mental health problems who killed his mother before leaving home to attack the school. Like so many of the mass shooters, he also shot himself. A report by the state office of the Child Advocate said Adam Lanza’s “severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems…combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence…(and) access to deadly weapons…proved a recipe for mass murder.”

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When Tom pulled into Bernie’s driveway, he knew he would have to wait. Bernie was never ready. Tom tapped the horn twice, and waited. After a few minutes, the double garage door opened. Bernie walked between the two shiny black SUVs struggling to carry his golf bag and his small suitcase. It was overcast and looked like rain. Not a great day for golf.

“The goddamn weather never cooperates. Every year we start off with a lousy day,” said Bernie.

He was already complaining.

Tom jumped out of his white SUV and popped the hatch back.

“Good morning to you, Mr. Sunshine. The weather is suppose to clear by the time we get to the course.”

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