Recently in Family Category

Dealing with the death of a pet is, for some people, an event from which they never recover.  Where once we just buried pets in the backyard under a foot of dirt -- or dumped the carcass in the trash bin like garbage--many now honor their deceased pets with cremation, mausoleums, headstones and other burial rites that were formerly reserved in the domain of people.

Lisa Marie Presley -- the single spawm of King Elvis -- announced this week she is pregnant with twins.

I was riding on a dollar van yesterday -- you pay a local step van driver to sweep you up and down the streets so you don't have to walk -- and I overheard a conversation between a wrinkled and crusty old man and pock-faced younger boy:  "Marry an ugly girl," the old man said in a heavy Spanish accent, "and you'll be happy the rest of your life because she'll be grateful for the attention and content with the ring on her finger."

Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.

Sometime around the middle of last August, I realized that I had to move away from Seattle and get back to New York City. I could hear the words of none other than David W. Boles from a few years ago; this is more curious because I have never heard his voice. He wrote me then, when I was first moving out here, to tell me that it was just going to be a matter of time before I came back. Well I am certainly glad that we didn't make a money wager on that because it was only a couple of years later when those words began to come true.

Jersey City is melting!

Yesterday, we were haunted by the news that a group of third graders planned to kill their teacher. What's next? A gang of contract Killers trained in Kindergarten?

Everything...

...with a mouth...

Today, I wish you flowers and joy!

Happy Valentine's Day! If you plan to celebrate, share you plans with us!

Is it an evolutionary necessity that all babies are born selfish and power-seeking?

Is it possible for the young to survive in the world without a "me first" attitude and a need to create their own power dyads that places them at the center of attention at the power core? If children require selfishness and power to survive, where then, does one draw the line between spoiling the child and creating the independent adult? At what age -- or during which milestone -- must the cord be forever cut to avoid the result of the ordinary, meandering, narcissistic, tepid, adult?

If the correction from selfishness and power-seeking is never healed in childhood -- what becomes of the adult -- and how can the rest of us avoid be punished for the child abuse perpetuated on babies that wrongly place them, and others like them, at the center of an inhuman universe where they can do no wrong while the sun rises and sets on their shrugging shoulders?

Heath Ledger is dead at 28.  If he were not famous -- would he deserve the celebrity mega-media coverage being blanketed upon us in the wake of his wake?