New Horizons by Max Roy

               Where We Are At! We have been in a struggle against COVID- a world-wide pandemic that attacked us all. And now it has become  endemic in the world we live in. Of course it hits hardest where people are not aware of what was going on. And in too many places it has become politicized. Should I mention China, preferring its own less-effective vaccine, fought it by closing down their economy. Now facing popular protest, they opening up and are letting it kill millions. And when their people travel, and other countries insist on testing them because so many are carrying the virus, the Chinese government is threatening to retaliate. Was Trump’s handling in the beginning any better? It became politicized for narrow political ends. More people died than had to. More people died than should have. Many millions would not have, if we had gotten it right.   What about global warming, rising seas and those hurricanes, threats to our future because of environmental change? We kn

    Seeing: My Eyes And My Inner Eyes   It is cloudy today, promising rain. In middle June of the year 2024.We have had our share, the last few months, rebuilding reserve stocks of moisture to carry us through a warm spring and summer. We had a virtual drought last year which led to wild fires here and in other parts of North America. Were we getting a taste of a future world where temperatures rise to an insupportable level? The staunch container ships are arrayed across the Bay. The water is glassy calm even with a sprightly breeze off the ocean ruffling my hair. It is currently being worn long and loose. My Bride and I are enjoying the pleasures of this promised summer day as we take our medicinal walk along the Sea Wall. Brave blooms are showing themselves everywhere, with the more courageous snowdrops and their ilk presenting a carpet of flowers here and there at our feet. I am wearing an inappropriate hat which I have adorned with feathers and a button preaching love. We

     Discovering The New World Most of us know the Vikings visited the New World about the year 1000. We have heard there are traces of their early habitation in Newfoundland. But they didn’t stay. We know more about the voyage by Christopher Columbus, and Italian. By that time there was acceptance that the world was a round globe. Columbus sailed west to reach India which Europe wanted to trade with so as to access the riches of the Orient. Trade through the Mediterranean in those days was being blocked by the depredations of peoples in the Middle East. Spain was hoping their investment in Columbus would pay off by their cornering control of that trade. It is interesting that this story has a Jewish dimension. Spain was by this time totally in control, with Portugal, of the Iberian principle after 800 years of occupation by Islam. Grenada, the last stronghold, fell about that time to Spanish forces. Attention was turning to the Jews, Spain’s most populous minority, numbering abo

        Heroes In Our Own Eyes Isn’t it the truth that all of us are thrust into the world and find ourselves, at least in the beginning, in the hands of strangers. If we are very fortunate these strangers form, or have formed, an emotional attachment to us newborns such that they undertake to care for us in our helpless state. We may, or may not, come to wonder about how that came to be. We may learn from that experience how we should treat others that we come to know in our lives.   If we are very fortunate, these strangers will lavish their resources upon us. In appreciation we may return an emotional response such that we may regard them as family, a relationship that is different than that with those outside the family circle.   We may return an interest and care for them for the balance of our lives. We may learn from this experience how to interact productively with others who are outside the family circle. But, we ultimately come to understand that, although the family re