29 results for author: Denele Campbell
Gifts For Our Future
What will make things better? Here are some ideas.
SOCIAL SUPPORT PROGRAMS: ADDRESS THE ROOT
When a person applies for food stamps, unemployment, Medicaid, or other tax-supported programs, they face a stack of requirements to prove they’re worthy of help. Each application and benefit comes with its own separate process. Part of the problem for such applicants might be a lack of understanding about how to fill out the forms.
What’s needed is an advocate to guide the applicant through the process but also, more importantly, to assess the person’s situation, capabilities, and needs and to assist that person in moving beyond their current ...
WHAT’S THE GOAL?
Hardly a day goes by on my Facebook newsfeed that doesn’t include a bashing of Democrats. And this by those who consider themselves liberals or progressives. This is deeply troubling.
For one thing, what other party has a chance of stopping the Republican power play that has brought us Trump? Some of my friends who post these tirades against Democrats like to believe that the Greens, or the Democratic Socialists, or Libertarians are a viable alternative to Democrats. To that I say, what are you smoking?
No third party has won a presidential election since … uh, never –
The last third party candidate to win a state was George Wallace of ...
WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US
What’s missing from the debate about our borders? The reason why.
People don’t just pick up and leave their ancestral homes and extended families without a good reason. In so doing, they face a dangerous and expensive journey in search of a new home. Yet despite the risks and hardship, these folks feel they have no choice.
What we hear is news about brown-skinned folks mobbing our borders, crossing rivers and sneaking into the promised land. We see them standing in lines, tear-stained kids’ faces, our media swamped with shouting heads about illegal immigration. Build a wall! Trump yells.
What does any of that do to solve the problem?...
NOW HEAR THIS
Once upon a time, people reserved loud outbursts for very special occasions.
HELP! FIRE! CHARGE!
In each case, the raised voice with its guttural message alerted anyone within earshot that an emergency required their immediate attention. Or in the case of warfare, now was the time to kill or be killed.
We respond to shouting both physically and emotionally as adrenalin dumps into our system. Our hands may form fists, our jaw clenches, our heart rate accelerates. Psychological studies have shown the negative effects of shouting.
In the mid-1980s, a certain conservative radio announcer discovered that shouting on air provoked a rewarding ...
A DAY WITHOUT MUSIC
One day. That’s all I ask. One day for us to recognize how much we’ve come to depend on and simultaneously disregard music. And to think about life without it.
One day without music in the doctor’s waiting room, the supermarket, the car repair shop. One day in silence while driving, while eating lunch at our favorite café, while having our hair cut. One day to live without a buffer against other people’s conversations, without music’s unique ability to suspend us in our own cocoon while noises of our increasingly crowded world batter us on all sides.
Think about television shows and movies without music to hype the suspense, give us ...
A DAY WITHOUT MUSIC
One day. That’s all I ask. One day for us to recognize how much we’ve come to depend on and simultaneously disregard music. And to think about life without it.
One day without music in the doctor’s waiting room, the supermarket, the car repair shop. One day in silence while driving, while eating lunch at our favorite café, while having our hair cut. One day to live without a buffer against other people’s conversations, without music’s unique ability to suspend us in our own cocoon while noises of our increasingly crowded world batter us on all sides.
Think about television shows and movies without music to hype the suspense, give us ...
AMERICA’S NEW GREATNESS
It’s been a crushing year. One after another, hard-won social advancements have been blocked or dismantled in the rush to “Make American Great Again.” But what does that even mean?
Exactly when was America greater? When everyone used outdoor toilets? When women couldn’t work outside the home? When skin color decided who could marry whom, or vote, or eat at a lunch counter?
Is ‘great again’ a worthy goal, the best we should expect? Is the conservative mantra right, that free enterprise and individual liberty “under limited government” was and forever will be the pinnacle of human achievement?
If only we could rid ...
HUMBUG FANCY FOOD
Personal secret: I’m a purist when it comes to food. Simple basic food, unlike the horror I saw recently where someone wanted to dress up avocado with a coating. For god's sake, people, avocado needs nothing but salt!
Take green beans. People go to a lot of trouble to serve green beans—green bean casserole, stir-fry green beans, battered and fried green beans. Well, what’s wrong with just plain green beans? A little salt, cook them tender, voila! Yum.
Then there’s the simple chicken breast. Recipes abound for chicken breast stuffed with cheese, or sausage, or breading. Or for chicken breast coated in this or that, or draped in creamy ...
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Back when … well, whenever, things were better. Right? People loved each other more, spent more time with family. Life was simpler.
Exactly when was that?
Was it the 1950s, Back when the U. S. and Russia detonated nuclear weapons above ground, when milk tested positive for radiation? When school kids routinely practiced scuttling under their desks in case of a nuclear attack?
When everyone smoked cigarettes?
When women had to find a back alley abortionist to end an unwanted pregnancy and the only means of birth control were condoms and diaphragms? (Okay, plenty of people think this was a good thing because, you know, women who abort ...
THE VIOLENT END OF THE GILLILAND BOYS
In the completion of my recent book, Murrder in the County: 50 True Stories of the Old West, I discovered that three of the fifty murders profiled there were committed by members of the same family! Intrigued, I researched more about these folks and the result is now published under the title The Violent End of the Gilliland Boys. Fascinating and shocking, this story features more twists and turns than an Ozark’s dirt road.
Christmas Day horse races 1872, Middle Fork Valley. Young Bud Gilliland waits, eager for another chance at his neighbor Newton Jones. Only this time, after two years of sparring, Newton gallops up in a cloud of dust, aims his ...