Friday Donuts

Dear Members and Constituents, We inhabit a world which is continuously stripped of its mysteries. Every scientific breakthrough. Every explorer’s accomplishment. Cold cerebral rationalization is slowly replacing magic. All things must have a logical explanation (which does not involve mystical creatures). Long gone are the days when we were afraid of what might lurk in the dark or were awed by the fog rolling into the crags at dusk. Or are they? As I arrived at my desk this morning a familiar yellow box sat on my chair with a heart-shaped note attached to it. The note read “Nothing like donuts on Tuesday” and was signed by the Donut Fairy. My advice to you this morning is not to question why or how this happened or who is behind this, just know there are three dozen donuts waiting for you at my desk. Come on down, there’s plenty for everyone. Happy Fr… Tuesday!

Dear Members and Constituents, How much is a dollar worth, and why is it we freely devote countless hours to work for a paycheck? When you think about it, a dollar has no intrinsic worth. It is not a good building material and has questionable nutritional value (although I bet it’s rich in fiber). A hundred dollar bill probably costs about the same to produce as a one dollar bill (and I bet coins cost more to manufacture). The dollar is not even backed by precious metals (we did away with that in the ‘70s). So why is it so many folks around the world put their faith in the almighty dollar? If you give it some thought, I think you will agree it’s a matter of convenience and trust. Let’s face it, barter is very bulky and inconvenient (How many hams for that plasma T.V.?), so we choose to trust we will be able to exchange these dollars for the goods we need and want. We trust the value of our dollars will remain relatively constant over time. By extension we trust dollars will remain rela

Dear members and constituents, When thinking of a utopian society, peace and love come to mind as two of it's key traits. But if you were building this society, which would you prioritize -say, if you had limited funding, and needed to phase-out the project. Love comes naturally in a peaceful society. Similarly, peace is to be expected when love prevails. But which is the better precursor to the other? The Beatles speak out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to this topic. They would have you believe love is all you need, yet, it was the very John Lennon who said we should give peace a chance. Then again this may be a false trade-off. It seems to me, peace is to love what chickens are to eggs (or muggy weather to mosquitoes). You can't have one without the other. I think there is a third item without which the utopian society is not possible. Donuts. This morning we have two donut girls. Tracy Holick, responsible for the physical donuts present at my desk (first day of

Dear Members and Constituents, Our lives seem to be filled with surrogates. Rationalization substituting religion. TV filling-in for conversation. Facebook replacing physical social interaction. Why is it we get caught-up in these alternatives to the real thing? To be sure, every case is unique and each medium has it's own appeal. Take facebook. I don't know whether the number of your posts is truly inversely proportional to the amount of face-to-face interaction you get, however, it stands to reason the more time you spend using it, the less time you have left-over for other activities. I think the it is such an appealing surrogate has to do with the fact it keys-in on several reward mechanisms. There’s something for everyone. Whether you’re an exhibitionist (sharing all the minutia in your life), a voyeur (keeping tabs on others), a journalist (archiving things for posterity), a collector (accumulating friends) or a gamer (pretending to be a rancher or a mobster)… you can get

Dear Members and Constituents, Have you ever subjected yourself to a root canal? Of all the activities we willingly undergo, root canals are the closest thing I know to raw, unadulterated torture. A simultaneous stimulation of all senses, root canals are an equal opportunity tormenter. The sound of the drill. The smell of burnt teeth and rotten bone marrow. The taste of tooth fragments and bleach. The sight of your teeth, turned to stubs. The vibration of your entire skull in response to the blunt instruments used… not to mention the raw pain emanating from that inadvertently pinched nerve-ending. A funny thing happens when you sit helpless on the endodontist’s chair, mouth full of cotton, wondering whether to dignify his latest question with a response (surely he realizes all the instruments in my mouth prevent me from articulate speech): You start to think absesses might not be so bad, after all. Mild chronic pain, bone loss and even toothlessness briefly seem attractive alternatives