For this morning’s cackle, I want to talk about Will Rogers. He is the reason I started RJsCorner 8 years ago. I have been reading him since I was a kid. For all you people that don’t know anything about what happened before 1980, I want to give you a little snort of Will and his words. Will was born way back in 1879 in … Continue reading Will Rogers – My Hero
I gotta admit that I was a hippie during the 1960s. Maybe not to the degree that I wanted but still a hippie. I had to work a full-time job, had college classes and the studying that goes with it, so that didn’t allow much time for anything else. But at least I was a hippie at heart. It’s good to hear that the students in the most recent school shooting are becoming avid activists for gun control and the rest … Continue reading My Kind Of Generation…
Welcome to the new and improved RJsCorner. Before I get into anything serious, you may think it’s kinda strange for me to now call my daily posts “Morning Cackles”? I got a reason for my madness. First off, for you city folks, a cackle is a short and abrupt sound that hens make after they lay eggs. My morning posts going forward will be short (250 … Continue reading Why are the posts now called cackles??
I have decided it’s time for a new chapter here at RJsCorner. It’s time to shake things up. I am putting out too much gloom and doom lately. Who wants more of that in their lives? I want to make my posts a regular part of your daily life. To do that they need to be more concise so you can read them in under two minutes … Continue reading It’s Time For A New Chapter @ RJsCorner…
I came across the story below and it amazed me that less than 8% of students in the cited survey knew that the Civil War was fought to preserve slavery. Here is a little bit about that: Just a third of students correctly identified the law that officially ended slavery, the 13th Amendment, and fewer than half knew of the Middle Passage. Most alarming, though, … Continue reading Hard History
Because I am deaf I have a game I play quite often when I am around people, especially those I don’t know. In my early years of deafness before closed-captioned TV was widely available is when this thing started. Since there was no sound to what I was seeing I made up my own storyline. It would have been interesting to discover how closely my story … Continue reading Imagining Their Stories…
Just a quick note to let you know I just published a new album on Mesa Verde on my Flickr Account. Click here to view it. Continue reading Mesa Verde National Park
I am finally convinced that I am a pretty creative person as my mind constantly wanders into unimagined areas of thought. In my retirement years, I have done a pretty good job of cultivating my creative processes. But I am always looking for ways to unleash my creativity to new areas and levels. When I ran across this article from the New York Times it gave … Continue reading Creativity
At one time or another everyone who is true to their thoughts doubt religious beliefs. I found it surprising to see that even Mother Theresa doubted on a regular basis that God even existed. The more I studied religious documents including the Bible the more doubt I had as to the beliefs of the variety of religion that I was then a member of. …according to a … Continue reading Faking Religion
For this artsy Saturday, I want to give you a “dramatized” photo of one of my favorite shots from Pleasant Hill Shaker Village near Lexington Kentucky. I have been to Pleasant Hill perhaps a dozen times over the years and I find myself re-taking this picture every time I go. Continue reading Artsy Saturday – Shaker Seeds
I am an old country boy at heart so when I visit NYC it seems like a different world to me. I have put together a few photos that make that city seem like a beehive. There is the hive which contains thousands of cells, the worker bees and of course the Queen bee. What do you think? Can you see the connection? Continue reading Surreal NYC
I am a fiscal conservative. That makes me a man without a party. The one steady thing I admired about the Republican party, at least until recently, was that they didn’t like debt. “If you were against President Obama’s deficits, and now you’re for the Republican deficits, isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy?” Senator Rand Paul said as he held up passage of the … Continue reading It’s Important To Take A Stand.
I get weekly quotes from iHearts143Quotes to help me understand life. This one particularly got my attention. It might seem strange to some but I have often said that I am a better person because of my deafness. What I mean by that is that through the challenges I have faced because of my deafness has made me much more aware of those who struggle … Continue reading Turn Your Wounds Into Wisdom
Yesterday’s post was all about spin and how we too often try to reimage something because makes us uncomfortable. It was primarily about the fact that we need to dispell the myth instead of just re-naming the condition. Today I want to talk about why this topic is so important to me. As I have often said, being deaf is a major part of my life but … Continue reading Dispelling Myths vs Reimaging
Just a short note to let you know that I just put my Disney World album on Flickr. You can’t say that you have really seen America until you see Disney World. Click here to see my offering. Continue reading Disney World on Flickr
Too many times we simply don’t like the name for something and to fix that we give it a new often indistinguishable name. Don’t like the word retirement, give it a new name. Give it a more positive spin. Call it the third trimester of life. Maybe that will offset the negative connotations associated with this time in life. Spin, spin, spin… On a lighter … Continue reading Reimaging, Spin, Spin, Spin
It is becoming more and more recognized that religious beliefs are and have most likely always been one of the primary sources of conflict in this world. Here are some words about the underlying reasons for this: “Religion often becomes the master variable,” Harris says. “It provides a unique reward structure. If you believe that the thoughts you harbor in this life and the doctrines you … Continue reading Religion And Global Conflict
Just a short post to tell you that I just added a Santa Fe album to my Flickr portfolio. Click here to see it. Santa Fe has become my favorite city InSearchOfAmerica. It is flush with history, heritage especially things Native-American and Spanish. Continue reading Santa Fe on Flickr
In these days of fear and gridlock, it is sometimes difficult to realize that there is always beauty if we open our eyes to what is around us. Yes, fear is a powerful emotion that can paralyze but for the most part, it is self-inflicted. Instead of living in constant fear we all need to realize that for the most part our lives and especially our responses to … Continue reading Beautiful Things…
Over at my blog RedLetterLiving.net I spent five years exploring various forms of religion concentrating on Christianity in all its shapes. I came away from that study convinced that the vast majority of Christian religions, of which there are thousands, spend very little time on the words of Jesus and it seems that many are now spending more time in the political realm than anything … Continue reading About Humanism…
Just a quick snippet to tell you I just added another album to my Flickr collection. This one includes pictures of many of the containers I have photographed during my visits InSearchOfAmerica. Click here to view this collection. Continue reading Containers Through History on Flickr
Wisdom has been on my mind lately. But before I get started on this topic I need to distinguish between two types of perceived wisdom, gut wisdom and learned wisdom. Gut Wisdom — Gut wisdom is that feeling you get when you think you instinctively know something. It’s what your gut tells you is the truth. I know the current Oval Office occupant says he … Continue reading About Wisdom…
For all you “off the wall” guys out there I am starting a new album at Flickr called “Surreal”. It will be composed of dream-like pictures about various topics. The first one is that to me NYC seems like a beehive. Click here to see the first offerings. NYC Worker Bees…. Continue reading Surreal @ Flickr
I have let it be known before that I am a mall walker. Every Friday I walk up to three miles at the local mall. It is good and safe exercise for this 70+-year-old deaf guy. 🙂 One of the things I do pretty regularly during these mall walks is to take unofficial surveys. Sometimes I count the number of women wearing heels higher than … Continue reading Never Alone…
Just a quick note to let you know that I have added a Louisville Album to my Flickr collection. Click here to view it. Continue reading Louisville Album Added To Flickr
The title of this post has multiple meanings. It was once a TV show about a single Indianapolis mother who was raising two teenage girls. It was a comedy but also showed some of the serious sides of parenthood. It is also a theme associated with Alcoholic’s Anonymous. That is you work through each day at a time to stay sober. But, I want to take the … Continue reading One Day At A Time…
This post is going to be about the economy and how the stock market has been acting lately. Don’t expect me to give you some sage advice about where to invest your retirement money. I would likely be wrong if I even attempted that. Nope, what I am going to talk about is how the stock market has acted throughout history. I think I do know … Continue reading A One-Armed Economist…
I will admit up front here that I cherry-picked the quotes below and the Facebook shot from a very long, agonizingly long, article from a Catholic site entitled Patheos. The author is Mark Shea who is evidently a regular contributor to that venue. The gun debate is an obvious case in point. Virtually everything I have had to say about it turns on a very fundamental … Continue reading Christianist Cult of Trump…
Just a short note to let you know that I just added a photo album of Waterford VA to my Flickr catalog. Click Here to see it. Continue reading Waterford Virginia Added to Flickr
For this artsy Saturday, I want to show you an “outside the box” art museum. I love things that stretch your imagination, stretch your brain. I don’t think there is another building quite like this one. It is the Milwaukee Museum of Art. I usually only give you one photo for Saturday but since I had trouble picking it I will give you a few more … Continue reading Outside The Box…
When you think about extreme poverty I’m sure you mostly think of third world countries. It is hard to imagine that over 3 million people in the US live on less than $2 per day. According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the … Continue reading What To Do about Extreme Poverty In The USA?
I just downloaded the EAA Airshow album to Flickr. Click HERE to view it. 41 photos in all. Continue reading EAA Airshow 2017 Album on Flickr
Americans are at odds with one another. Pundits and news outlets have made that resoundingly clear, but the vocal far right and far left are not as thick in numbers as they would like us to believe. It is a disparity in the way we visit the polls that is allowing extremist views to occupy the media spotlight. That and the desire to win … Continue reading Not Thick in Numbers…
RJ's Corner 