Thoughts from the Mountain Top

I don't mind a good discussion.  Disagreeing with people and hearing different viewpoints has given me insight and changed my mind on a subject more than once.  A discussion on a friend's wall popped up the other day.  This is someone who I generally agree with.  There was a link to an article on a liberal blog about someone losing friends over politics and race.  The author was going to "quit talking to them about it."  The author was then accused of "white privilege." Now, I'm not one to dismiss "white privilege."  It exists in many ways.  I just don't think this is an example of it.  I've ended friendships over politics and race, especially in the last six months.  It was more of a decision to preserve my sanity, which the author cites as well, and a complete waste of my time.  Engaging these people is not going to be anything constructive.  They are not going to change their minds.  Is it "white privilege?"  I d...

I'm doing a separate post about growing up on Long Island, NY because if I were to include it in my other post it would be too long.  This also makes it easy when I want to refer back to where I grew up. Once a year, you hear about Elmont in the news.  That's when they run the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Racetrack, which was really the centerpiece to Elmont.  Well, that and Beth David Cemetery.  You know Andy Kaufman is buried there? Anyway, my parents moved there in 1953, long before I was born.  At the time it was being developed into housing and the house they bought was only 5 years old.  My Mom would take the bus from the subway to get home after work.  The first time she did, she could see her house from the bus stop but couldn't figure out how to get there.  It was still mostly farmland. I came along 13 years later.  When I was about 8 years old I was so happy that another family moved in with kids.  Of course, I had friends in the ...

I've referred a couple of times over the past few weeks to a former friend known as "Pete."  To sum it up: at one point we were friends who had different world views.  That devolved once President Obama was elected.  It was no longer simply just a difference of opinion.  I didn't like what I saw and rather than dealing with what I saw as a selfish and racist point of view from someone who likes to pat himself on the back quite frequently about what a good Christian he is, I unfriended him.  I didn't block him, so a few months later there would be a friend request from him (in retrospect now I guess he thought I'd "cooled down").  The first time I just renewed the friendship.  The second time it took some persuasion on his part of how he enjoyed our conversations and he respected me, blah, blah, blah.  When the same conversations kept happening on my page where he kept making the case that him being selfish and racist amounted to him being a good C...

I'm a Disney fan. Huge. I mean, I live in New Hampshire and have an annual pass. That should tell you something. Growing up, my kids went to every movie within a week of it being released. We bought clothes. We went to the Broadway shows. What we never did was go back and look at the real version of the tales Disney adapted. You see, most of them didn't have the same ending depicted in the Disney films. The Little Mermaid dies, Pinocchio kills Jiminy Cricket but does eventually redeem himself, Sleeping Beauty is raped by the King while she is sleeping and gives birth to twins. In Shakespeare's version of The Lion King (a.k.a. Hamlet) everyone dies. You get the picture. Maybe we should have talked about it more. Maybe it doesn't matter. What brought this up was a post in a Facebook group of Disney fans. The post was a link to a photographer's work trying to draw attention to certain contemporary issues by depicting Disney Princesses affected by them. The ...

Drug addiction is a complex and serious issue. Arguing on Facebook about whether it's a choice or a disease is, frankly, pretty fucking stupid. That post by a friend of several of my kids prompted this line of thinking tonight. I will say this: the issue of the way we judge people who are struggling can be an impediment to them getting help. So while you might want to "argue" about it being a "choice" vs. a disease, your words might make a person who is already in a very vulnerable place reluctant to seek help. Know the value of what you are saying and who you are saying it to. That was my response to his comment. The people who responded to him were pretty much on the same page, or if they had any inflammatory opinions they took his admonishment to heart and didn't express it. I lived with addiction and the consequences with my daughter's suicide. I know it is a disease. She had everything to live for. The drugs got ahold of her and wouldn...

I've been struggling so much with my faith, especially watching people who call themselves Christians bend over backwards to justify the most un-Christian-like behavior.  I've been wondering where God was in all of this.  I wondered if God abandoned his creation (for as much as I believe in evolution, I just can't wrap my head around intelligent life rising up in the randomness of the universe.  I don't discount evolution, but I also don't discount that some higher power had a hand in it.  Kind of like an inventor testing out different versions of his creation.  How many versions of the light bulb were there before Edison got it right?) Today, as I was working in my kitchen it felt like I was getting answers.  You can say it was my own head.  Honestly, I believe someone was speaking to me. There's someone I know named "Pete".  Pete likes to think he's a "good Christian."  He goes to church every Sunday.  He helps out on a mission in a Ca...

Yesterday, someone I know for a long time shared a completely awful article titled "Stop Calling Your Drug Addiction a Disease."  I won't share it myself, but if you've been on Facebook any length of time you've likely seen it or a variation of it.  Sharing something like this is the fastest way to get me to unfriend you for a variety of reasons I will touch on. The view comes from a place where the writer blames the addict for their choice to use.  For most addicts, it was a long time before they are acknowledging their addiction. In fact, the fact that they acknowledge an addiction is a huge step in itself.  I think my daughter went to her grave not seeing herself as an addict. Then they reminded Jesus that adultery was punishable by stoning under Mosaic law and challenged him to judge the woman so that they might then accuse him of disobeying the law. Jesus thought for a moment and then replied, “He that is  without sin  among you, let him  cast...

While I was on vacation this past week, I read a couple of good books.  One I'm not quite finished with, so I'll withhold commentary on it until I do, but the other I connected with in a way I wasn't expecting. Born To Run is Bruce Springsteen's autobiography.  Now, some of you might be rolling your eyes, knowing what a Springsteen fan I am.  Of course I'd like it; of course I'd connect to it.  What spoke to me, though, was more what he wrote about his psychological make-up.  In some ways, reading what he wrote lifted the veil from my eyes about my own life. Springsteen grew up in a home surrounded by a large and extended family.  Yet, many times in his life he describes himself as being driven to isolation.  This was particularly the case in his relationship with women.  They didn't last more than 2-3 years until he was headed for the hills.  He didn't want to open up enough to take that step to really feel deserving of love and tended ...