bierkergaard

The above photo is a pictured-framed compendium of my family Christmas pictures from 1962 to the late 90's. It was a gift from my mom, the keeper of Christmas pictures, to all four boys when she left the family home in Pennsylvania to move to Florida. A closure I suppose. When I was moving the other week, I contemplated throwing it out. It was big and bulky, the covering glass weighing about 15 pounds. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but with its size--and what the pictures represented psychologically--the thing felt like it weighed a ton. A pictorial ball and chain. Despite all of the happy smiles, there is a lot of pain in the pictures. Me, a premature baby, early pics of the family life that was far from ideal, my teen years of tumult, and young adulthood in all of its lack of polish. I don't like who I am in a lot of the pictures. Looking at it often in past caused sharp jagged pain in my soul. The framed pictures spent the last 6 years in the shed out back at the...

We have all heard the maxim, "Curiosity killed the cat." Visions of cats electrocuting themselves by biting through extension cords, falling out of trees onto hard concrete from forty feet and not landing on their feet but instead on their heads, and getting smashed by cars while toying with a dead mouse on the road, come to mind. I don't know the leading causes of accidental deaths among the feline class but the saying of curiosity being a sometimes deadly thing with cats surely is based on a tragic history. I just used my imagination to envision a curious cat coming to his end through deadly inquisitiveness. It is appointed once unto a cat to live and then comes the judgment. No nine lives (re-in-cat-nation?) for either cats or people. Although, I think the live nine lives refers to a cat who should have died after doing something stupid but escaped the claws of the reaper through dumb luck, maybe losing a paw or an eye through a misdeed, but living to mew another ...

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." Now that the election is over, and I saw the Obama victory coming--it is like a board game--we can look back and see where Mitt Romney went wrong. This video and audio was a big blow. If Romney can't explain to the American electorate (especially this 47%) why free markets are better than gover...