Month: April 2023

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You Do Not Ever Need to Feel Lonely Again


I am struck by how many people say they feel lonely a lot. Why is this? Is it because they do not have a mate? Is it because they do not know what to do with themselves? Is it because they are depressed?

I will start with the last thing first. Depression is a medical condition which requires treatment, first and foremost, by a psychiatrist. I hear many people say they went to their primary care physician to deal with it. If the primary care physician is not immediately referring such patients to a psychiatrist, shame on them! But once that condition is stabilized, the following suggestions apply to them equally as with someone who does not have depression.

The first thing you might do is read a book. Figure out which types of books are likely to be of greatest interest to you. Expect to find some that, after reading a book or two, did not hold you as you had hoped. Move on to another genre and do not stop until you have identified at least two genres that please you. Once that is accomplished, play a game with yourself to read as many of these books in a month as you can. Of course, libraries are a great resource in finding books but if you end up like me, you use your local bookstore to find them. And once you are done with them, please, do not throw them away. Simply put them in the library’s return book area or drop off device and be certain they will be welcomed.

Next, get outdoors and walk. Even walking is a great source of exercise but as another use, you can get out into nature and enjoy her. Most people own an automobile, so if you live in a city, make no excuses about there being nothing to find in the city. I can easily combat that idea, but that is for another time. In the countryside, find a walking trail. Walk slowly with the determination to find as many different animals as you can. Even when I am riding my bicycle, you would be surprised by all the animals I saw. And oh yes, bring a camera with you. You may see some animal you have seen frequently, but this is a photographic notebook of your travels. And no time of year is not good to do this. Once you start see certain animals and birds, of course, many times, find a spot where you can rest and watch these creatures in their habitat. Note how they move and which of their species they move with and how they do it. One thing you will find, birds love to be in the company of another of their species but of the opposite species gender. Note the color differences. If the bird is brightly colored, most likely it is a male. But do not stop a birds, notice bugs, and if you have the stomach for it, spiders, they are the most resourceful and creative of all insects, in my opinion. And for a mind blower, remember that scorpions are related to spiders!

Another thing to take note of is the flora of the woods. In northern climes, see if you can spot a lady’s slipper, a type of orchid which is rare but not impossible to find. If you see one, there are probably others near it. But do not pick them! They are an endangered species. Of course, also in nature are trees. There are nine different types of conifer trees, pine trees. There are 35 different species of elm tree, there are 600 different types of oak tree, there are 17 types of walnut tree, there are 13 different types of cedar tree, and the list goes on.

Can you find edible plants? There are 120,000 types of these plants.

Wild flowers abound and figuring out what you are looking at is a challenge unto itself.

I recommend that your purchase some of the different books that apply to each of the things above: trees, birds, wild animals, edible plants, rocks and other things.

Finally, if you find yourself “stuck” in the city and cannot get out for any reason, take a walk along the sidewalks. As you do and come upon a building you think is old, look up and find some of the most amazing architecture. Modern buildings are cold and without merit. But buildings dating back to the 1930s and earlier, were built with a lot of pride. You will find cornices, finials, balustrades, arched windows, colored glass, and windowed and non-windowed domes, some with bells. There are many other parts as well but that is what you will need to identify. Start with the easy buildings, old public libraries and other public buildings. Take pictures of these buildings, make a written note of them, such as what the picture is, and take them home and research them. It is not impossible to find a building dating back to the 1850s, or earlier! Note the progression of styles. Find out what their original use was. Let’s say you live in New York City. There are two buildings of note that I would bet most New Yorkers know nothing of their history. The first is the Flatiron building and the other is Grand Central Terminal.

Each of the things noted above are things you can do alone. And some beg you to do them alone. But the important part of all these exercises is that you will not feel alone while doing them and you cannot help but learn something new, never a bad thing.

One last important note. If you find yourself drinking every night or everytime you feel lonely, consider the case that you might be an alcoholic. Call your local Alcoholics Anonymous Service Center and talk to whoever answers. They are alcoholics in recovery and can give you some useful guidance.

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You Cannot Read This


I recently saw a list of books that are banned in at least one state if not many. Among them are D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Anjelou, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the list goes on!

I read several of these books while in high school and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to ban them. They are classics for a reason. Each is very well written and by authors whose legacy of being among the great American Authors will remain unblemished.

Florida’s governor, Ron DiSantis leads the way of deciding who can read what. And he is not alone but simply stands out more than most. God forbid in the state of Florida that a student might want to read The 1619 Project. What happens to that person if they do, that high school student? Are they expelled? Are they punished? Or are they simply inquisitive about the world around them and how we got here. Should that student follow up with The Grapes of Wrath and then Tortilla Flats, is that student on his road to perdition?

Conservative American politians claim they are here to fight to the end to preserve a person’s 1st Amendment rights, but does that right not include the liberty to read what he or she likes? I guess they think pouring all their efforts into making sure everyone in America has a ton of guns and not worrying about preserving a person’s right to choose.

Oh! There is that phrase! “A right to choose.” Hmmm, sounds like something a pro-choice person would say. But is not pro-choice also inclusive of the right to choose what any one person desires to read? Let’s see, they won’t ban Hustler Magazine, but they will ban To Kill a Mockingbird! The foolishness of this should be apparent to all Americans.

And one last thought, Texas is the only state in the union that sets a long-standing standard as to what material is included in high school history books. God help us because what is next?

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Things I Should Have Said to My Father


My father was/is my hero. He died at the age of 57 when I was just 20. And because I was so young, it had not occurred to me to ask him a large number of questions plus just talking to him about things in general.

I am the eldest of three children my parents had and simple math shows that my father was much older than most people who were having children, particularly when considering how old a parent is when having that first child. My mother was 35 when I was born. That was in 1949 and at the time having a first child at that age was considered bordering on dangerous. Of course, it wasn’t as we know today.

My father lived in a large old house, built in 1790, a farmhouse style home, that my family occupied since 1791. The makeup of my family in 1912, when my father was born, was an upper middle-class family, a family that could afford to have a cook and housekeeper. My grandfather was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had a strange feeling towards his children and their education. While two of my three uncles went to college, my father graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology, a trade school in those days that had strong ties to the textile industry of Massachusetts. The industry was quite extensive at that time and my father, who graduated in 1932, became an employee at the J. P. Stevens Mill in North Andover Massachusetts, his hometown. When the war broke out in 1941, my father delayed his entry into the service because of his father’s impending death.

My father served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was part of the armament section for a B-26 which had him serving in Morocco, Algeria, Italy and finally France. He declined a promotion that would have required his transfer to the Pacific theater of operations. But when he returned home, a law which required J. P. Stevens to take him back, was ignored and he was told his position no longer existed. A patent lie but my father was a gentle man who was not one to take issue.

From what I have told you, you might think I knew so much about my father. But those unasked questions came to surface when I interviewed his sister Charlotte in 1988. Even that interview was wanting for a more logical and extensive series of questions. Still, I learned a lot about my father’s family experience through her. But still, it was not done in his words.

A sampling of questions I might have asked: What are your earliest memories of your family? What were Thanksgiving and Christmas like? Tell me about your going to the Center School (elementary) and Johnson High School. Why did you want to go to Wentworth instead of a 4-year college? Why did you end up getting our house instead of Uncle Ike or Uncle John? Why did you go into the jewelry business and watch repair? How did you learn to repair watches? I am certain that were I to sit with myself, I could easily come up with 100 questions I would love to hear the answer. But as I said, my father died when I was just 20 years old and too much “all about me” as is common among young men and women then and today.

Year later I got a master’s degree in U.S. history which brought home the idea of written family histories. My thesis would have been ever so much better had I known of personal journals of the people involved. After I retired from the Federal Government with 30 years of service, I went into teaching, and I frequently would tell the children to learn as much as they can about their family history. It is only to common for a person to say that their family history is boring. But it is not! Each of us is a part of history and we all witness history from out own unique view. That view can be crucial for future historians. This fact was brought home when I was writing a paper in grad school about the beginning of the Revolutionary War. I found the diary of a young man who lived just south of Boston and wrote down, albeit briefly, his take on the first shots of that war. That was invaluable.

Not to put too fine a point on this subject, I was taking the train from Boston to San Francisco (Oakland) when at dinner one day in one of the mid-west states, I was seated across from an elderly woman. I asked her the usual questions, where are you from and what did you do from work. From that modest beginning opened up a wealth of information, totally unexpected. She too had said hers was a boring background as she was “only” a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse in southern Ohio. In the late 1980s that was a story worth telling.

I do not expect any young people to read this article, however, I know adults will. I implore those of you who are reading this article that you get a written history of your family of birth and that you pass on to your children your own personal experiences. The importance of having first-hand knowledge of the events of history is extremely important. What you experience is unique and worthy of being told to following generations. When history is written, it is these first-hand accounts that will give a much more full understanding of history.