bierkergaard

A friend of mine posted a lovely meditation on December and darkness,  On Advent and the like. I commented appreciatively that "For darkness is the realm of dreams." Every so often I feel as if I hit a note right, like a string on a guitar. It just vibrates in a shimmering expansive way. When I was in the midst of Ph.D. studies and working full-time, I unwisely consumed a lot of coffee after work so I could stick to my six-day work-out schedule and be alert in the evening for my wife. Long story short, I just didn't burn the candle and both ends, I microwaved the f@cker into a molten pool. I was stressed and exhausted all of the time and then used beer to try and douse the psychological flames on the weekends. Really unwise. I was never in danger of being an alcoholic or anything, it was just the caffeine and alcohol duo was just the wrong remedy. Sleep was not restful, I skimmed on the top of sleep like a smooth stone on the surface of a stream. I was clocking t...

Lancaster City is being plagued by an outbreak of shootings and suicides. A good deal of the violence is by young men. A school teacher was murdered last week in her city house in a cold blooded break-in robbery by two young assailants who didn't know her but one lived in her neighborhood. The community is shocked and saddened. A lot of hang-wringing is going on where people are looking for answers. I have worked with teenagers for close to thirty years and as a result of such in-depth experiences over such a long period of time, often with society's most distressed and troubled kids, I know a thing or two more than the average person about adolescents. I was in a bit of a discussion with a friend, more Liberal than I, on Facebook about remedies to this and I felt as if he somewhat discounted my insight. I don't offer easy solutions but ones that I think are grounded in reality and not idealism. My general point was that fear can be a deterrent to crime. Not the best d...