Category: Life Lessons
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Time Marches On (Us)
As of the first of this month, March of 2023, I became part of a demographic that is difficult for me to comprehend. I am now officially on Medicare. That’s right, a little later this month I will reach my 65th birthday. It all seems a little surreal to me. I can’t possibly by 65…
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Retirement Podcast – Knoxville, TN
I’m proud to announce that you can now listen to a podcast interview I did for the good folks at Retire There with Gil and Gene. Although I have written over 200 articles and a couple of books about living and retiring overseas, Gil and Gene and I discussed something a little different – Knoxville, Tennessee as…
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Time to Grow Up
This is our second holiday season celebrated under the shadow of COVID-19, and I’ve been seeing some common themes pop up on social media revolving around family get-togethers between vaccinated and unvaccinated kinfolk. If you have browsed through Facebook or Twitter the last few weeks, you know what I mean. It seems there is always…
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Strip-Mining Classics for Profit
I just finished watching the most recent episode of the long-anticipated Wheel of Time on Amazon, and felt compelled to write about it. I also will get into another long-awaited series, Foundation on AppleTV. I suppose I should say “spoiler alert!” because I will mention some plot points without giving too much away, but in truth, the main issue…
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Lesson Re-Learned
If you have read any of my books or short stories on travel, you know that Rita and I normally eschew the guided tours, preferring instead to discover and explore on our own and at our own pace. In fact, one of my recent posts was about the joy of finding someplace unexpected. It is not…
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Hoping to Travel Again
I have what’s called a Smart Folder setup in iPhoto that sorts photos by month from the previous thirteen years. The photos for whatever month we are currently in then displays as the screen saver on our living room TV. I know that makes me kind of geeky, but really it’s a nice trip down…
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Hate and Anger on Facebook
Phone the neighbors, wake the kids, it’s time for another Facebook Rant! Actually, this time it is more of a screed about Facebook users, and the larger issue of the increase in hate, anger, and general incivility over the past four or five years. I’ve always said, if you have nothing nice to say, say…
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Do the Write Thing
“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”― Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde was truly a man ahead of his time. Never in history has it been easier to get a book published, and never has it been…
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I Shall Believe
It has only been four days since I said no political posts for a while, and although this touches tangentially on politics, it is not really a political post. What’s on my mind today is something I think is at the root of most of the rancor and division in America. Too many Americans have…
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Labels and Boxes
Last week I had a typical yet interesting Facebook exchange with an Ecuadorian. I believe he spent some time in the US, and may have family there, but mostly he is a musician giving one-man shows around Ecuador. On Inauguration Day, he posted a simple “Welcome to Socialism”. Comments were mixed, mine was rather tame…