It has been my privilege to be a citizen of this country since 1968, when my army duty was completed. Prior to that I had two years as an immigrant under asylum and four years as a resident. In all this time I have voted in every election and done so proudly and gratefully; this is a right earned, not given. As it is in every other country where free elections are held it is the right and, in several cases, the legal duty of every citizen to exercise this voting privilege. And also, in every one of these countries, in order to vote you must show an identification which proves you indeed have the right to do so. Why did I come or was sent as a youngster to the US? My country of birth saw the coming of a government which promised the Heavenly Gates and delivered all of us straight to the doors of Hell. This happened mid-20 th century but was the beginning of the so-called “Socialism of the 21 st . Century”; a trend, directly fed and promoted by that first government, that has ...

“For me, a very definite change of attitude is that I have come to understand that it is my duty to take care of my own needs before taking care of the needs of others, including those who may depend on me. This is a simple statement; but its profound meaning and ramifications have taken me a lifetime to grasp and accept .” The above is an excerpt of a blog entry written some 8 years ago, while undergoing the healing process from my bout with cancer as well as from the first of two hip replacement surgeries. Why look at it again now? Two reasons: first, I am in the middle of a general review, trying to choose entries to include in a “compendium” which may ( or not??) come out in printed form and, second, this entry was recently used as a reading exercise in one of my English classes. So, it was fresh in my mind. The over-all consensus on reading and discussing the content was that yes, a person in order to give must have something to, well, give. Cannot offer much -positivel...

Every 1 st  week of January becomes a time to once again check those issues and items which have gone undone during the past year. Or the ones which were done when they actually shouldn’t have been done. And all those changes we sworn to undergo in order to be “more acceptable”. The reality is that I, like many others, like to think that with the coming of the new year comes a time to usher in new thoughts, possibilities, directions and, in general, a new lifestyle. One perhaps more in keeping with those general guidelines acceptable to the world at large. Or, at least, to that world within which I strive to write my own life’s story. My own little world-at-large. Then come the following days ( after the first of the year, that is ) and some of those oh-so-determined resolutions begin to weigh in with their respective demands of time, effort and even funds and I begin to see them for what they really are. An exercise at trying to alleviate an already overburdened conscien...

If you come from Puerto Rico or have lived in Puerto Rico for any time at all, you’ll recognize those words. If you don’t, read on… It was early summer in 1965 and my coming to Puerto Rico had taken place some few months before. The summer recess was starting, and I needed to make some income. There weren’t too many places eager to hire an aspiring 19-year-old as a CEO-in-training so, the next best thing was to hire out as a door-to-door salesman. My first gig was selling magazines. Yeah, I know… but, hey… in a worst-case scenario I could always read my wares and be entertained. And… yes, there were frustrating times when I felt very defeated and did do this. Money was not flowing at the time; at least not into my pockets, and every lunch time became a search for the least expensive fare I could find. Along the side streets, away from the main avenues, there were many small businesses which were managed from the front door of someone’s house. Usually, these dealt with some ...

Some of the blog entries are being used as reading material in my ESL classes ( no, I’m not selling the stuff, the students do like them!! ... just an added bonus…) and, after reading the Puerto Rico series, some students were asking me if I ever went back to PR after the Army years… In going over the blog from the beginning, there is a definite non-sequitur pattern, which is present throughout the “body of work” ( like that? …  no, not my words, just something I remember hearing, but applicable…) . Perhaps this may explain the gap; the Army service became the focus for a few entries and then, other issues took up time and space, blurring away the memories of that unfinished business. What is there to say? While in the army, during my early training program, my thoughts of PR were centered around the negative issues that permeated my last 3-5 months there. In fact, as you probably know from other posts, I didn’t return for Thanksgiving or Christmas. There was no resentment...

Some days we simply get up and “the” mind is in a fog. Today is one such day. We’ll see what falls on this page. In those moments when there is nothing much to do or to think about, I tend to reminisce about the long passing of the years. Childhood, youthhood (huh??), adulthood, and eventually oldhood ( another -huh??- please?). Sometimes these thoughts are full of wonderment about how we, tiny humans as we are, manage to survive many obstacles and improbabilities. There is no certain answer to this, but I do believe in the human capacity to survive, when the choice is made to do so. In talking with a friend about this, he asked whether I had ever been to a “motivational seminar”. The answer is no, I have not participated but have listened to and watched some of those gung-ho servings of adrenalin which come under the title “Motivational”, subtitle “send me your money”. I have to bring up the unasked question: Can we really go to a seminar for a few days and, along with ano...

In life we deal with many issues. Some are run of the mill, some are not, and others fall into that “more difficult to manage” status; often, we don’t really know how to go about dealing with these.   Thinking about this yesterday, while thinking about a situation that was developing, the title line of this entry came to mind. - “You must wield a steel claw covered by a silk glove” It was late 1973 and I, living then in Connecticut, had started working with a young life insurance company out of Miami, as an independent agent. This was the first time I came across a fully prepared ( canned, literally ) sales process. The government had recently passed a law allowing individuals to purchase a retirement account which could be qualified, just like a pension plan, for deductions of the premiums from the income tax basis. The company had an average product with an outstanding presentation. We carried around a self-contained machine, which showed a full 18-minute story as...