New Horizons by Max Roy

  Going For Broke(n)?   No! Never! Never say die! What is it in us that just can’t tolerate the verdict of our apparent fate when we find ourselves in the trouble that we failed to predict? We have all made bright plans for ourselves and our futures. What was it like to wake up in mid-life and find our dreams have crumbled into dust? I have felt like that at times. The gorge rose in my throat and I looked around for something I could smash in my rage at my seeming fate. What did we do then? Did we give up the ghost? Or, did we change our strategy, find an alternative path? Or did we fiercely continue with the course we had chosen, redoubling our efforts? I always soldiered on. Why was this our fate? Why were we in that state? Where did we go wrong? Why did the world rise up perversely to frustrate us in our ambitions? Did we contract a disability which limited our freedom of action? Did we construct a web of obligations that we could not deny, tightly trapping us in the wrong

         Sunny Rhymes   I'm thrilled to see a sun that shines, After so many days that rain inclines To weigh so heavy on my mind That sometimes breathing is a grind. I shout within, happy smiles display, Humor spout in grand array, I am the guy to be around, When sunny weather's on the ground.   Shall I tell you more in skipping rhyme About our lives and passing time? World events make me weep blue Rhymes cheer me up to start anew. Rhymes can carry words profound, To fire men’s minds my world around or gentle thoughts like new-wound fleece to bring a fevered mind sweet peace. Mark you well, the sun and rhyme Can sway men’s minds and alter time .   Max Roytenberg .

                                                             Righting Wrongs! I am in such a rage, I do not know where to turn. When I assess all the positive things that Jews have contributed to humanity, and contrast that with the treatment my people have undergone as recompense, I understand neither humanity nor God. Indeed, there is no justice, and there are no grounds to believe in the God whose worship the Jews have championed. If not for their belief in God how could there be Jews? If not for their belief in God, how could there be a Jesus? If not for Jesus, how could Jews have inherited the political lie of the Catholic Church, and its descendants, that his fellow Jews Killed him? If not for that, Jews would not have faces millennia of murder, forced conversion, exclusion and persecution. And Islam’s Mohammed followed suit because we would not his version of the story we have been telling. These wrongs have never been righted, nor can they ever be righted. Out of this cruci

                             Being Old! That is so different from feeling old! Being old is what I think of other people or what others may think of me. Feeling old is so much more personal. Feeling old is so much more a recent phenomenon, something that has crept up on me so much more recently. I have noticed that, being old, in other people for a long time, as the ranks of my contemporaries has been thinning out. But now, I am noticing how the distances I want to cover, have to cover, seem so much further away. I am much slower in my reach, much slower to pick up things, so much slower to get up and go. When did I develop that tremor that I never noticed before? Why do I not recall the name, the word, that I used to instantly recall? What’s happening? I must be getting old. It makes me feel old. I have always reveled in the richness of my memories, my memories of things that so many around me have not the least idea about these days. My triumphs that were so much a part of the

                                                                                         Book 5-June/21                                                                  Heroes In Our Own Eyes William Shakespeare designated a minor character in his play, Hamlet, to express and offer to us a profound advice, something which is really an observation about the nature of the human animal. It rattles around in our minds, and probably has since time immemorial. Certainly it has in the Western world over the centuries, no matter whatever the origin of our personal cultural tradition. Polonius advised, “to thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day, you cannot be untrue to any man”*. It may be that many people do not think about it, but some of us, those with aspirations regarding the roles they hope to play in the lives they will lead, have this buzzing around in their conscious and subconscious minds. And it begs the question, who and what is that self? Some of us,