The Human side of Humanity

Good day, Good tidings for the season everyone! It has been quite a long time since my last piece and life has been busy- very busy.  We are in the "Holiday Season" here  in the states and mostly around the world.  The season that begins with the US Thanksgiving holiday in November and extends through New Year's day.  I have returned to my former profession since the last piece that I posted, and its an industry that is insanely busy during the fourth quarter of the year. In the interim another season ended.  Youth soccer season.  I've been a youth soccer coach for a very long time.  Most years I've enjoyed the leadership, mentoring and skill development of today's young players.  I can say that this was a particularly enjoyable year and a great group of players and parents alike.  I even convinced my longtime assistant coach from years back to come out of "retirement" and help me.  The two of us make our own great team.  Jim is...

Good day, Good day, I know it has been a long hiatus since the last blog.  How long?  I was just getting started coaching the current youth soccer season and now it will be over in a week!  I've been busy, very busy and sometimes in the bustle of life we all just push forward to get things done.  In that push, well, for me anyway, I may not pause to look in the mirror, just keep going and say "Forget it! I don't care how I look, I don't have time right now."  Haha! Deciding to just go out and make the world accept you the way you are usually doesn't matter. Hey, Answerman is a man.  I have fairly short hair and as a dude, I don't wear makeup.  There's not the same concern that some women have of being seen in my morning state as one of my female friends described.  Men are lucky in that regard.    Generally speaking I run into all kinds of people I know at the local supermarket.  I'm normally in a presentable state. Well, in m...

Good day, good day readers and followers. The world spins around on energy, postive energy keeps it spinning forward with an electricity that brightens the world.  Every once in a while there are instances, occurrences that let all of us know that we did the right thing somewhere.  I've long said that small things aggregate, amalgamate to be big things.  Sometimes, in small places these little things result in a smile.  Remember, sometimes a smile can be the diffence in a good day and bad day to many. On Saturday as I was on my way home from the winning soccer game for the Philadelphia Union soccer club.  I stopped in the local pub.  This isn't just any local barroom, but the one that sponsored the team for which I played for several years and the club for which I coached for even more!  The current owner is one of my former teammates.  A lot of the "kids" that we coached hang out there now that they became of legal age. Saturday, when I enter...

Good day readers and followers.  Welcome to a new day.  Here in the Northeast US its another rainy Sunday.  I have to share that my days are not following any particular pattern.  I've lived such a structured and regimented life that while its not unnerving to not need to be somewhere  it is almost confusing.  I had owned a small business for almost two years with it's dizzying pace, where I had to be a weatherman, delivery driver, accountant, manager, babysitter, human resource executive and still have time to do the company laundry.  Most days I was up by 4 or 4:30 am and the days were all 10 to sometimes 15 hours long. In Human Resource parlance, I am in transition.  Winding down some business while not actively operating.  I don't have to be in the gym at 4:30 or 5 am just to get to work by 6 or 7 am.  It's the current but temporary "new normal."  Prior to owning the business I was still up by 5am and in the gym by 5:30am for...

Hello my somewhat dormant readers and followers. The last two months have brought so many issues to the surface that I didn't know what to address...but now I do.  Dishonesty, it rides mostly on a train that is going downhill- then stalls.  We have collected some honest factoids to hopefully get the engine uphill. First off, are there "Flying Horses?"   Nope!   The mythical pegasus, etc never existed.  Does  a Pegasus have gender differences, i.e. a vagina and a penis w/testicles?  NO, they are f@cking mythical, WTF?  Does the Answerman  say "I don't give a flying horse's balls what you say" for nothing?"  It is a go-to phrase when something strikes me as so unbelievable, useless or dishonest that I don't know what to say.  I don't know when it started but in a moment of frustration I just blurted that out.  Now it's just something that comes out when I'm frustrated with someone's actions/words. The truth is that ...

The mire is deep, the sludge like, slimey and seemingly bottomless pit that blinds the eyes to what is really going on. Michigan State University (MSU) jumped into the mire with Dr. William Stampel and his prodigy, the previously excoriated Larry Nassar.  Peas in a pod, eh?  No, Nope, predators in a clubhouse full of assholes.  A clubhouse of assholes funded by public money- and an enormous financial machine funded through athletics. Both were lead by a woman so blind she makes my half bindness seem like 20/20 vision.  Fuck You Bill... Fuck You Bill Stampel!  Your cell mate won't be the mousey little piss boy Larry Nassar.  You misused your abilities and power, ignored the mission and responsibility of mentors.  You both became tormentors.  Disgraceful, Disgusting, Disturbing.  Fuck you! MSU apparently could never get out of its own way.  We now know that Dr. Bill Stampel, a mentor to the tormentor, predator and pedaphile Larry Nassa...

Good day readers and followers it's another sunny but cold Spring day here in the village of the Answerman.  Once upon a time- on a warm summer night I had  the words to a monologue or soliloquy (pick your word) fall out of my head.  If you're a writer and you have it happen then you have to write the stuff down or it evaporates.  I had the good fortune to be home, wrote it, typed it, saved it...nearly four years ago.  I mentioned it in a previous blog piece. The scene had two people, one man, one woman.  I never touched it again. I left it alone- no character development, no additional dialogue.    I left it alone on purpose. The characters didn't even have names.  Another writer I know found it fascinating but ignorant.  My style of writing was mostly prose, poetry with two story books that I've never published.  I never wrote a play or a scene. The first story I wrote when I was 13 and 14 years old.  I have it somewhere,...

Good day readers and followers.  Welcome to Easter morning...at least here in the USA it's morning.  Easter is a global Christian event.  If you celebrate the holiday it may mean gathering with family or friends.  A day filled with activities for children- Easter Egg hunts, baskets of chocolate and other candy.  All of this usually follows last night's ritual of dying/decorating hard boiled eggs. We take children that are a bit over-tired from the Easter preparation activities then dress them up in some formal, fancy clothers so that they become uncomfortable.  We go to a lengthy church service that the young ones don't understand and then gather with the aforementioned friends or family.  The kids are buzzed up on sugar and messing up those nice fancy clothes. Ah, and then the parents can be heard "Jimmy or Johnny, Gisele or Margie stop running around you're going to get your clothes dirty!!" Kids don't care.  Y'know, I don't care either....

It is Easter Sunday so I am reposting the most widely read blog from this site.  Enjoy! Good day my dear readers, followers, friends and the general assortment of global folks who don't know me at all! It is Easter weekend.  Easter, a very confusing religious based holiday that has more strangeness than Christmas.  A holiday that has almost as much over-the-top commercialization to blind everyone to the religious basis.  What is it, this Easter holiday? Hmmm, let's see, it is not the holiday with the creepy corpulent guy who lives in cold environments and runs an illegal sweat shop that the government celebrates.  Nope, that's Christmas and Santa Clause.  Oh, and that is supposed to be based on the biblically recorded birthday of Jesus.  That's pronounced  "Gee-zUss"  for the uninformed, not  "Hey-zues" .  Jesus Christ- the basis for the word  Christ mas.  This is why the religious world takes offense to the commercial...

Hello readers.  This is a new day, which makes all of those preceding it a memory.  In the Helios-bathed neighborhood of Parkland, Fl their good people were plunged into emotional darkness last week.   They became the latest site of a school shooting.  17 dead.  Countless affected.  This jarred me back to 1999 and Columbine, CO.  All the way back then it was the third school shooting in a year...but the first where dead were in double digits. It occurred to me that the youngest of the students from that horrifying '99 event were 14...but are now as old as I was at that point in 1999-32 years old.  When they left for school that morning none would have ever imagined that the memory created that day would repeat itself in the future...and unfortunately, several times before they even reached middle-age.  When you're 14-18 people that are 32-36 are "old." I remember the anger I had when the news coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech Univer...

Hello readers and followers.  I have been letting this build up over the last couple of weeks as the trial of a monster disguised as a doctor has been ongoing.  Going a bit further the trial was really of a system, an institution and its negligence, ignorance and passivity.  At the end there is a true Heroine.  Some of you may recall from prior blogs, my constant indictment of USA Gymnastics (USAG).  A "not so governing" body that should be totally dismantled, destroyed and completely rebuilt.  There are about 155 young women who can do the job better.  They are victims. Larry Nassar- the monster who preyed on the athletes, the young women he was supposed to protect and heal from injuries.  Nassar had a medical degree to hide his lascivious actions- he was the USA Gymnastics Team doctor, the Michigan State University (MSU) athletic department doctor who was protected and revered while he abused and harmed the young women he was supposed to treat...

Hello readers and followers.  We are now at the edge of January and February and it has been over a month since my last entry.  There have been many times that I was ready to share with all of you but it just was not time.  I have some vitriol that will be shared but now is not that time.  You may recall that my great friend Gale, "Coach" died the week of Thanksgiving holiday here in the states.    I met Gale by way of my best living friend Jeff.  We were quite a crew of three.  The Core 3.   We were the core three of an ever changing group that would go to Central NY, fish, drink, poke, joke and have a good time for 15 years. We used to pass the responsibility of planning the annual "big trip" as we called it amongst the three of us.  Eventually, Jeff assumed responsibility for the planning some 6-7 years ago.  Occasionally two of the three of us would meet, sometimes all three aside from the big trip.  We didn't always...