Friday Donuts

Friends, Walking down the streets of Chicago this week I saw a young man holding a cardboard box that read “begging and ashamed”. Now, I usually feel bad for folks who’ve resorted to panhandling -even if I sometimes wonder about their need. I wonder what it would be like to live on the street and imagine walking in their shoes -telling myself I would surely make the best of such circumstances. But when I saw this kid, something was different. Maybe it was his age (not much older than my own kids). Maybe it was just his demeanor (slouched so as to avoid eye contact). Whatever the reason, I started thinking he was someone’s kid. How must his parents feel? Did they know their son was in this situation? Were they unwilling or unable to help him? Then… I imagined this scruffy young man as my son. Bam! I was struck to the core. What if that was my kind, innocent, loving son driven by who-knows-what circumstances to beg? Ragged, tired and dirty on some strange sidewalk. Begging. That simp

Friends, With the appalling news out of Nice last night it’s hard not to succumb to fear –which is precisely the intent of those perpetrating such atrocious acts.  At times like these (which are all too frequent), I find it helpful to try to put things into perspective. After all, we live in a big world. With 7.4 billion of us around, you might not be surprised to know 151 thousand people die every day. About 1,440 of them –slightly less than one percent—die due to violence. So, even though eighty four people were killed (which, admittedly, is eighty four too many), that’s under six percent of the average number of people who die a violent death every day.  As we mourn the loss and contemplate how we can make the world a better place where everyone gets along, I think the best thing we can do to combat the cowardly acts of evil men is to go on with our normal lives, comforted in the knowledge that far more people die from diarrhea every day (close to fifty thousand) than the combine

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”   –Thomas Jefferson Friends, As both a science afficionado and a news junkie, the thought of a 24 hour news cycle conjures memories of the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles. Of course, once that notion was planted in my head, I was compelled to draw it out (a picture is worth a thousand words). The process begins and ends with the commentator who anchors (pun intended) two distinct sub-cycles  which are established based on the relative distance of reported events from your home: local (i.e. near) and global (i.e. far). The local cycle is tailored to your surroundings and while you might be forgiven for assuming it’s relevant to your daily life, the reality is it is mostly comprised of fluff, fleeting information and is full of itself. Then there’s the global cycle –granted this is a generous label –you’ll notice the U.S.A. is bigger than the rest of the world (i.e. “scary pl