Some monarchs wear jewel-encrusted crowns; others are more like earth angels.  Those souls in the latter category seem to have been born with special gifts that allow them to uplift thousands and thousands of their fellow human beings, even after they have departed this earth to claim their heavenly wings.  Known for innovation and integrity […]

Down through the ages, men have forsaken their possessions, ideals, and nobility for lust.  The David who slew the mighty giant was felled by Bathsheba; Antony’s heart was enslaved to Cleopatra.  The long list of horny toads continues until the present day.  It includes such clods as former New York Governor Spitzer, actor Charlie Sheen, […]

I cry at commercials.  Not all commercials, only those that are shot in and include familiar touchstones of my beloved New York City.  Thus, did this geek whose TV viewing once relegated primarily to documentaries and concerts get suckered into watching The Apprentice.  Understand that for most of my life, midtown Manhattan was my old […]

Born December 19, 1924 and named, in the Italian custom after his paternal grandfather, my brother’s entry into this world was the beginning of a life that would come to enrich our entire family.  Twenty months later, I was born; our little brother Anthony came along almost four years later.  Early in Rocco’s life, he demonstrated […]

Well before I was old enough to vote, I had made the conscious decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church: the faith into which I had been born.  In tossing away the dogma and iconography of an organized religion, I clung tightly to my spirituality and enhanced it as I matured, through spiritual meditation.  Decades […]

Recently, while in channel flipping mode, I was flabbergasted to stumble across a show featuring a woman whose fantasy is to weigh 1,000 pounds.   You read that correctly: not 100 pounds, but 1,000 pounds!  It turned out that this woman hails from our neck of the woods, Old Bridge, New Jersey.  Her name is Donna […]

When God promised Noah He would never again destroy the Earth with floods, we’d assumed that Noah’s was the last ark we’d ever hear about.  We were wrong.  Centuries after Noah led his animals “two by two” up the gangplank, modern-day arks have sprouted up worldwide.  In the U.S., Central America, and Australia alone, these […]

In what could be the brush fire that ultimately engulfs an entire forest, New Jersey voters turned out in surprising numbers yesterday to defeat proposed school budgets throughout the state.  With reported turnouts of more than double the previous year, New Jerseyans gave a resounding “No” to more than 55% of all proposed budgets statewide.  […]

Yesterday, a dear friend of mine had a major meltdown, in more ways than one.  Retired early from Corporate America, she now performs a non-paid labor of love, facilitating groups nationwide via a global human service organization.  Priding herself on perfection, my friend also has a large house, which she keeps spotless, two dogs whose […]

Maple Shade, New Jersey, is a quiet town of working class people known as the Gateway to Burlington County.  A few weeks ago, however, it achieved notoriety when a local resident and parent of a student at Maude Wilkins Elementary School (Grades 3 and 4), Janine Patterson Giandomenico, became the source of a conservative cause […]