Ailantha - Blog

What Lindsay Graham Never Had The Chance To Do

7/12/2026

It's Gospel truth that none of us knows the day or the hour when our soul will be required of us. And yet, whether one held U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham in esteem or contempt, who among us wasn't shocked to wake up to the news this morning that this man who had loomed so large in the national consciousness for decades was dead? Not only did Lindsay Graham die suddenly last night, but only hours after returning from Ukraine, where he was involved in a diplomatic mission of the highest level with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Someone once told me they believed that we don't die until we've finished everything we need to do on earth. Appealing as that thought may be, people die too early too often to put much stock in it.
In any case, I don't believe it was true for Lindsay Graham. Though he accomplished much, for better or worse, during his lifetime, and his last undertaking during his time on earth was certainly a significant one that played out on the world stage, still I believe there was one more to-do Lindsay Graham probably intended to take care of someday, but now never will.
I believe that Senator Graham was likely planning, when the time was right and he felt it was safe, on renouncing Donald Trump. I say this because in the past, at times when Graham had nothing to lose and nothing to gain by being honest and standing up for his convictions, he did condemn Trump.
Back in 2015 Graham excoriated Donald Trump as a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." In the election year 2016 he said, "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." In those days he called Trump a jackass. He refused to vote for him in the 2016 Presidential election.
But then a few months after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Lindsay Graham turned from a fiery principled critic of Trump to Trump's most faithful ally and staunchest defender.
That is, until the MAGA attack on the Capital in 2021, after which Graham seemed to have unearthed his moral righteousness, saying of his former relationship with Trump, "All I can say is a count me out. Enough is enough."
But then a short time later, when it became clear that the members of the Republican Congress lacked the courage to convict Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol attack, Lindsay Graham once again tossed aside his integrity and followed the Republican majority in voting against Donald Trump's conviction.
And when Donald Trump's star once again began to rise, Lindsay Graham once again hitched the wagon of his political career to that star.

But in quiet moments of self-honesty, did Lindsay Graham not know that he sold his soul, and did he not plan someday, when Donald Trump was out of office and influence, on repenting his relationship with Trump and publicly buying back his soul and his legacy?
I'll bet he did. But even Lindsay Graham didn't know the day or the hour his soul would be required of him and his legacy set in time.

References:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/from-staunch-critic-to-fierce-ally-grahams-long-strange-and-consequential-friendship-with-trump

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgj25j6nmeo

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Why They Could Get Away With What Graham Platner Can't

7/8/2026

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Why They Could Get Away With What Graham Platner Can't

As of tonight, Wednesday, July 8, it's over for Graham Platner, the magnetic progressive populist oyster farmer who became the Democratic Party's Great Blue Collar Hope for winning back the United States Senate.

As the whole country by now knows, Platner was accused by a former girlfriend of entering her house and raping her while he was blackout drunk, a state caused by a vast intake of alcohol during which a person is capable of walking, talking, and committing rape or other forms of violence, but incapable of remembering later what transpired while they were intoxicated.
Graham Platner denies he raped his girlfriend. That's likely because he doesn't remember raping her.
True, Platner had a history of alcohol abuse, ill treatment of women, and an erased Nazi tattoo. But those of us who were rooting for him were willing to overlook his sins of the past because his seemed to be a story of redemption, of going and sinning no more, of a turning away from his reprobate past and a recovery from the PTSD that stoked his substance abuse and the subsequent abusive behavior it caused.
But rape, even committed while in a state of trauma-induced blackout drunkenness, and even if it happened years ago, was a sin too far, an aggression that wouldn't stand. This was disheartening for those of us who saw in Graham Platner not only a chance of winning back the Senate for the Democrats but a champion for progressive policies on issues such as healthcare, housing, climate, education, billionaires paying their fair share in taxes, and more.
But what Graham Platner stands for now doesn't matter. Democrats, myself included, have dropped and renounced him. His political career is dead, along with our hopes for what he might have accomplished.
Still, I found myself pondering with my mate Tom how it could be that someone like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could get away with having paid off a woman he drugged and raped in a hotel room and, according to former coworkers, frequently coming in drunk to his job at Fox News. Not to mention his Nazi tattoos, which he didn't even feel the need to remove.

Or how RFK Jr. could breeze by an accusation of sexual assault by his children's nanny with the excuse that he wasn't a choirboy.

Or how the accusations by dozens of women of rape and sexual assault against Donald Trump didn't keep him from being twice elected President of the United States, or continually loved by his MAGA base and supported by his Party faithful.

"It's this simple," said Tom. "These days a Republican can get away with it. A Democrat can't. The Democrats just won't put up with that kind of behavior in their leaders anymore."
I guess that's why I'm a Democrat.

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My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th

7/4/2026

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My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th

Today being a very special birthday for our country, I thought I'd share my 4th of July memory - which happens to be my favorite of all favorite 4th of July memories - of where I spent our nation's last big birthday celebration, the Bicentennial, on July 4, 1976.
Like millions of Americans, I spent that very special Fourth of July at a family picnic. Our picnic was in a lovely meadow outside a small village in Hungary a few kilometers from the Soviet border.
In the spring of 1976 I was working for the U.S. Army as a crafts instructor on a post in Aschaffenburg, Germany,

...and was engaged to a young captain named Tom Liszkay.

By May Tom's tour of duty was up and I'd left my job and we were touring around Europe by Eurailpass for a few months before returning home to the States.

Tom being between a first and second generation American - his mother was a Hungarian immigrant and his father was born in the United States of Hungarian immigrants,

...we decided to include in our travels a trip to Hungary to visit his uncles, aunts, and cousins there.
Now, in those days Hungary was part of the Soviet Bloc, a Communist state under strict control of the Soviet Union, as Russia was known at that time. The United States and the Soviet Union being Cold War enemies back then, for an American to travel behind the Iron Curtain was a weence daring. And scary.
But back in those days Tom and I were young and more than a weence daring. And only a little scared. (Though Tom, with his Hungarian name, was slightly more scared than I was).
Before our trip we needed to visit the Hungarian Embassy in Cologne, Germany, to acquire visas to enter Hungary,

...and permits to travel around the country.

(We were told we would be required to register with the police upon our arrival in each new town. If we did not, we were warned that upon leaving Hungary our travel passes would be checked at the border and if there were not dates stamped on our passes reflecting everywhere we'd been...well, I don't know exactly what would have happened. Of the four families we visited, nobody wanted to take us to the police station and two absolutely refused to. I suppose that with armed soldiers patrolling the streets everywhere we went, people wanted to stay under the radar. We somehow got out without any adverse consequences, though).
From Cologne we traveled to Berlin, since were in the neighborhood,

...and from Berlin on to Vienna.
In the last days of June we crossed from Austria into Hungary, where we would crisscross the country visiting Tom's relatives in the towns of:
Győr,

...a good-sized city where Tom's uncle, aunt and cousin lived in a tiny apartment with a living room, a small kitchen, a bathroom and one bedroom. Tom told me that his uncle had once owned the whole building, but after the Communists appropriated the building and redistributed the apartments his family was allotted this one. Tom's aunt and uncle normally slept in the living room and his teenage cousin had the bedroom, but during our visit we were given the bedroom while the family slept in the living room.

From Győr we traveled to Pusztadobos,

...then Nyíregyháza,

...and Salgotarjan,

...where Tom's cousin, a hair dresser, gave me what she called a "beautiful frizura (hairdo)" so I would look good in Budapest, our last stop along the way,

...and which I thought was a more beautiful city than Vienna, in spite of the old bullet and mortar shell wounds in some of the buildings left over from the 1956 Hungarian revolution, when the country tried, but failed, to break free of the Soviet Union.
And, aside from the armed soldiers patrolling the streets in the cities and one young, bored functionary in the tiny village police department in Pusztadobos who obviously felt that it was the chance of a lifetime to meet and intimidate two American visitors, the Hungarians in general were the nicest, most generous, friendliest folks I've ever met. They didn't speak much English, Tom spoke - and taught me - only a few words of Hungarian, and yet we all managed to somehow communicate.
Which brings me to July 4, 1976, the Bicentennial. It so happened that our itinerary brought us to the village of Pusztadobos, the rural village on the Soviet border from which Tom's mother emigrated, on Saturday, July 3.
Soon after we arrived Tom's young cousins,

...took us for a walk around the village. It looked like a place out of a storybook. Some of the homes had thatched roofs. There were cherry trees growing along the paths.
At one point the children ran into some of their friends. During the course of their conversation I thought I heard the words "Abbot and Costello" repeated several times. Turned out I did.
Turned out there was going to be on television that night an old black and white Abbot and Costello movie from the 1950's, but apparently an American movie showing on TV - even an old black and white one - was a national event. Tom's relatives bought a special dessert from the bakery for us all to enjoy while watching Abbot and Costello, which we did.
The following day was Sunday, July 4. Tom's relatives owned a piece of farmland, and so they ordered a couple of taxis to take us out to the property. We then walked to a scenic spot for our picnic.
It was a lovely 4th of July, a balmy sunny day, us sitting under the trees on a blanket in the grass, eating our sausages and bread and plums, cobbling together conversation from the few words we understood of each other's languages, laughing and laughing. Our hosts seemed unaware that this day was a special one for Americans, and neither Tom nor I had the vocabulary to explain to them about the significance of the July 4th and the Bicentennial.
And yet it felt kind of wonderful to me, to be there on that 4th of July, making new friends whose language, culture, and life experiences were so different from mine, and realizing that our differences really didn't make any difference. We could still come together and find plenty of common ground. Somehow it felt so American.
Happy 250th 4th of July, Everyone. May we all someday have friends the whole world over.

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Thoughts On The Supreme Court's Decision On Birthright Citizenship

6/30/2026

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Thoughts On The Supreme Court's Decision On Birthright Citizenship

Today the Supreme Court of the United States of America handed down a decision on a case that the Supreme Court of United States of America should never have taken in the first place: that of whether the President of the United States has the power to delete our Constitutional rights by simply issuing an executive order.
The Constitutional right in question was that bestowed upon us by the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Citizenship Clause, which states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
And the President in question who sought to cancel out this inherent principle of our democracy with a quick stroke of his pen was...who else?

Now, in pondering why the Supreme Court agreed back in November of 2025 to hear this case that had previously been unequivocally struck down by lower courts, at first I thought, well, mayhaps a Trump-weary SCOTUS intended to hear the case, hand down a final ruling on the subject and shut up the face of Donald Trump about it once and for all. I mean, of course the Supreme Court wouldn't overrule the Fourteenth Amendment?
But then the Court's conservative majority, which has been fulfilling one after another of Trump's desires on his anti-immigrant wish list, just a few days ago gifted him with several especially cruel immigration rulings, among them one allowing Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian refugees and another allowing his administration to turn away asylum seekers at our southern border.
This made me wonder: If Trump's hand-picked justices were cold-blooded enough to hand down what was in effect a death sentence to hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian refugees and deny the right of human beings to seek asylum, a right that is a tenet of international law and dates back to ancient times, might not these same justices be jaded enough to allow Donald Trump to mutilate our Constitution and cause cataclysmic upheaval to our social order?
But then, today the Supreme Court handed down their decision to uphold our Fourteenth Amendment and reject Donald Trump's ploy to abolish it. Which felt like wonderful news until it sunk in that the verdict to keep our Constitution intact passed not unanimously or even nearly unanimously, but by a single vote, five to four.

Had just one more justice favored Trump with their vote, then those five could have thrown our constitution and our country into a crisis. Which makes today's ruling feel less a cause for celebration than a warning that our country is hanging under the sword of Damocles.

References:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-meets-to-weigh-trumps-birthright-citizenship-restrictions-blocked-by-lower-courts

https://news.lee.net/news/nation-world/government-politics/on-immigration-supreme-court-accedes-to-trumps-restrictive-agenda/article_7805bb97-1824-585d-b255-6139bd87ad12.html

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-trump-immigration-c73cf0c70bb550ebf0a55fafddbd935c

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Mission San Juan Capistrano, A Beautiful Monument To The Theft Of Land, Lives, And A Culture

6/27/2026

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Mission San Juan Capistrano, A Beautiful Monument To The Theft Of Land, Lives, And A Culture

...Continued from 6/19/2026:
On Wednesday, June 3, Tom and I left Fallbrook and soon thereafter we were on the scenic highway back to Los Angeles.

The town of San Juan Capistrano was along the way, so we decided to stop there and see the famous old Spanish mission where, I learned as part of my Catholic education, the swallows return every spring on Saint Joseph's Day, March 19, to nestle in the mission eaves.
However, as we were to learn, the swallows no longer come to the mission since their nests were cleaned out in the 1990's, but the birds still do return and settle in elsewhere around the town for the spring and summer (though we didn't manage to see any swallows during our visit).
The historic mission district of San Juan Capistrano appeared to be a tourist-friendly spot,

...in the center of which was our destination, the Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The entrance to the mission opens into a lovely courtyard landscaped with flowers and trees.

One can wander among the ruins of the mission's massive Great Stone Church, destroyed in an earthquake in 1812.

We walked along the colonnades of the mission veranda,

...which opened into rooms and artifacts from the past.

The posters and pictures on display in these rooms tell the mission's story.

Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776 by Father Junipero Serra, Spanish Franciscan missionary who accompanied the the army sent by the king of Spain to colonize the New Spain territories of Mexico and California.
For his part Junipero Serra oversaw the building of missions up and down the coast of California and the conversion of the region's indigenous people to Catholicism. For this Junipero Serra was made a Saint by Pope Francis in 2015.

From Father Serra's missions grew the major cities of California from San Diego to San Francisco. Serra introduced European crops and flowers which flourished in the area's Mediterranean climate and eventually turned the state into an agricultural giant spread with an abundant variety of blooming plant life.
Junipero Serra brought in the first cattle, which quickly proliferated and from which arose California's vast ranching industry.
California was born and grew from Juniper Serra and the Franciscan missions, and Mission San Juan Capistrano is called the jewel of these missions.

But in the words and images on display here there was a subtext that made only light reference to a massive ugly truth of Junipero Serra's missions that couldn't be missed by those of us who were already aware of it, and that truth, embedded in the pictures and posters of Mission San Juan Capistrano, is this:
That Mission San Juan Capistrano and all the Franciscan missions along the California coastline were built upon the backs of enslaved, cruelly mistreated indigenous people.
In this region it was the Acjachemen people who were baptized,

...then brought to the mission where they were enslaved and used as labor for the priests.

The society and traditions of the Acjachemen were taken from them by the Franciscans and replaced with European culture and religion.

Their land and way of life was stolen by the cattle ranchers.

And once inside the Mission, there was no escape for the Acjachemen. They were condemned to servitude for life.
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia that was not among the artifacts at Mission San Juan Capstrano:

Nor was this excerpt from one of Serra's letters:
“In the matter of correcting the Indians,” Father Serra wrote to the governor of California in 1780, “when it appeared to us that punishment was deserved, they were flogged, or put into the stocks, according to the gravity of their offense.”

I did find this historian's understated, feather-light admonishment at the bottom of one of the posters:

It reads:
"As stewards of history it is important to consider scholars, historical records, and first hand accounts. For some, Serra’s legacy is questioned. Because of his leadership of the California missions, and thereby the system of Spanish colonialism, some hold Father Serra responsible for the loss of California Native American population and culture. As a leader, Serra oversaw Spain’s mission system which identified Native Americans as potential Spanish subjects and did not value the original native religion, culture or autonomy. A goal of the padres was to teach the indigenous people to live a life of European culture and societal norms while abandoning their own traditions. Furthermore, colonialism inadvertently introduced European diseases to the native Californians. Without immunities or modern medical knowledge, diseases spread quickly which caused the loss of thousands of Native Americans and decimated their population. There was great loss to the California Native American way of life during this time."
However, another poster offers this moral defense of Juniper Serra:

On the wall of the mission there is an inscription that reads, "Veritas Vos Liberabit,"

...which means, "The Truth Will Set You Free."
Whatever truth the indigenous people of California learned from Junipero Serra did not set them free, but enslaved and destroyed them. The least we can do centuries later is fully acknowledge the awful ugliness of that truth,

...instead of beatifying the man.

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/us/attack-on-statue-of-new-saint-junipero-serra-digs-up-old-conflicts.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/opinion/junipero-serra-catholic-saint.html

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Here's What I Remember About My Mom

6/24/2026

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My mom, 98 years old, praying for a win for the Eagles.

Today is June 24, my mom's birthday. It's been five and a half years since she crossed over and, though she doesn't visit my thoughts as often as she used to, this morning I woke up and there she was, as alive as ever in my memory, images of her clicking by like a slide show in my mind.
She's smiling in every scene. That's how I remember my mother, always smiling. Smiling, laughing, singing - she could break into a song at anytime, much to my mortification during my middle and high school years. My friends, on the other hand, found my mother funny and delightful. Most everybody found my mother funny and delightful. My mother was often funny even when she wasn't trying to be, a trait I seem to have inherited.
Ah, Mom, I want to do something to commemorate you today. But what? I know you went through bad times, sad times, hard times, navigated some turbulent waters, who hasn't in their life? I know there must have been times you upset, annoyed, or aggravated me.
But somehow - except for breaking into song in front of my friends when I was 13 - I can't seem to clearly remember any of those times anymore. Or if I do, they carry less weight than a feather on my shoulder.
So here will be my commemoration to you, Mom. I'll remember only the good times, the happy times, the funny times, I'll call my sister today and we'll laugh over memories of you and those times. I know you would like that.

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Beautiful San Clemente

6/19/2026

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Beautiful San Clemente

...Continued from 6/8/2026:

On Monday, June 1, Tom and I drove 100 miles southeast from Los Angeles,

...to the mountain town of Fallbrook,

...to visit my sister Romaine and her husband Stanley,

...who live in a neighborhood with splendid views of the surrounding mountains.

Upon our mid-afternoon arrival Romaine fixed us a yummy lunch,

...with a too-pretty-to-eat salad,

...which we nonetheless ate, and it was indeed as delicious as it looked.
During lunch we got on the subject of Stanley's grandson who is performing in a summer stock production of "Brigadoon." I shared that I love "Brigadoon" and often listen to the soundtrack. My sister added that she'd never seen a stage version of "Brigadoon" but loved the old movie version with Gene Kelley and Van Johnson. I said that I loved the stage version but had never seen the movie version. Stanley then suggested that, as we had no plans, we spend the remains of the afternoon watching "Brigadoon." We all agreed that watching "Brigadoon" was an excellent idea, which it in fact turned out to be.

The following morning we drove to the city of Oceanside,

...to the beautifully landscaped train station,

...from where we caught a train to San Clemente.

Now, all I previously knew about San Clemente was that it was the location of Richard Nixon's "Western White House." But before the day was through I would know what a lovely place San Clemente is.
Even the train station was in a pretty location on a beach with a pier,

..and across the street from the train station there was a strip of picturesque buildings.

Nearby on the pier there was a restaurant called the Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar.

Since it was almost lunch time we decided to stop there for lunch.

We were able to get a great spot outside with a great view of the pier and the beach.

The food was so good.

After lunch we hopped on board the San Clemente free trolley.

A few stops later we alit from the trolley and walked several pleasant blocks,

...until we reached our destination, the Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens.

The Casa Romantica was built in 1927 on a summit overlooking the Pacific Ocean by real estate developer Ole Hanson as a luxury Spanish Colonial style mansion for his family.

During the Depression Hanson lost the house, and over the years various owners came into its possession until it was acquired by the city of San Clemente in the early 2000's. Its doors were then to the public, who can now come and tour this historic site, as we did.

The overlook:

After our tour of Casa Romantica we took the San Clemente free trolley back to the train station area. We stopped for ice cream,

...then walked along the pier.

After that we sat for a bit while we waited for the train and enjoyed the scenery.

Then we headed down to the train station,

...and soon after we were on our way back to Fallbrook.
To be continued...

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What The 31 Religions Should Tell Pete Hegseth

6/12/2026

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One would think that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would be so occupied with the disaster of a war our country is currently quagmired in - at a cost to the American people of $850 million to $2 billion per day - that he'd have no time for such trivial pursuits as the suppression of religious faith among military service members.
And yet Pete Hegseth has apparently been frittering away his time drawing up a list that drops 180 faiths from the U.S. military's code of recognized religions and belief systems. Per Hegseth's new order, the Department of Defense now acknowledges among service members the existence of only 31 religious affiliations, 22 of these religions designated as Christian - the A List religions, as it were.
After the new exclusionary list came out the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were outraged, as well they should have been. Except that they were outraged for the wrong reason: the Mormons were angry that they weren't included among those religions named as Christian, such as the Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, etc., but rather were lumped in with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and the other B List religions.
What actually should have infuriated the Mormons was the very existence of this exclusionary list. In fact, this list that includes some religions and cancels others should have raised the righteous ire of each of the 31 religions that won a spot on Hegseth's list.
The leaders of each of Hegseth's chosen religions, whether they are among his top-tier Christians or relegated to a lesser seat at the lunch table, should unite in a spirit of solidarity, rise up together and refuse to be part of a military religious hierarchy that discriminates and otherizes.
The 31 chosen should tell Hegseth to either restore the former Department of Defense list of all the religions that he dropped or take them off his list, too. Good soldiers never leave each other behind.

Reference:
https://www.military.com/dod-officially-drops-180-faiths-from-militarys-recognized-religion-list

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What I Loved At The Bat Mitzvah

6/8/2026

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On Wednesday, May 27, Tom and I were once again back in Los Angeles,

...this time to attend a bat mitzvah to be held on Saturday, May 30.
There was lots for the family to do to prepare for "the bat," as we called it for short, and so Tom and I, as well as some of our children, who also flew out to L.A. for the event, volunteered to help with the preparations.
My job was to make a fruit salad for seventy people for the brunch that would be held after the ceremony. As the bat mitzvah (the phrase refers to both the ceremony and the girl who becomes a "daughter of the law") had chosen pink as her color, her mom requested that I make the fruit salad using watermelon and strawberries.
I decided to carve out a watermelon to use for a more festive fruit bowl,

...and recruited my son Tommy and son-in-law Miguel to be fruit cutters.

(NB: We cut up the fruit the previous day, then stored the fruit in the refrigerator in a container separately from the carved out watermelon. I also stored the empty watermelon bowl in the refrigerator. When it was time to serve the fruit salad we then poured the fruit into the watermelon bowl).

The bat took place at the Cornerstone Church, an open-hearted Christian congregation whose pastor kindly lent out its space for this Jewish coming-of-age ceremony.

The service was quite beautiful and uplifting, and I was much taken with the music,

...the Rabbi's warm welcome to us all followed by his insightful, thought-provoking homily, the bat mitzvah sweetly singing her Torah passage with the assistance of her Hebrew teacher,

...and the many blessings read by friends and family members.

But among the congregation I noticed something else that struck me as kind of wonderful: several girls all dressed up for the occasion…and wearing tennis shoes.

After the ceremony at our brunch in the church hall,

...I sighted more young guests in dresses and sneakers.

Now, this wasn't the first time I'd ever heard tell of sneakers worn with dress attire. A few years ago a young Facebook friend posted pictures of herself and her friends attending their prom in formal wear and tennis shoes, and I posted a blog on my elation at seeing girls finally liberating themselves from the pain and restriction of high heels - which were really just one step above foot-binding - in favor of more comfortable and practical footwear that allotted them freedom of movement (see post from 10/1/2021, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/hooray-for-school-dance-sneakers).

I loved it.
And I again loved seeing these young teens in their sneakers on this day, and later in the evening at the bat mitzvah party,

...all decked out in their party dresses, free and moving,

...and wearing their sneakers.

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My 2026 Commencement Speech

5/31/2026

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Another graduation season is upon us, and once again legions of young people will soon be stepping into their futures and the challenges of negotiating life in this turbulent world after having been sent on their with the many words of wisdom, insight, advice and encouragement proffered to them at their commencement ceremonies.
And once again it's time for my yearly commencement speech, in which I endeavor to offer the new graduates a few words of my own to help them along their way on subjects that might not have been covered by the keynote speakers at their graduation ceremonies.
And so here it is, my 2026 Commencement Speech:

 1. If you wake up in the morning and don't feel like eating, or, in fact, any time you find yourself lacking an appetite when it's time to eat, try eating a bagel.

It's surprising how a bagel can do the trick.

2. When painting a room, take pictures of the things around the room before you move them,

...including the order of the books on the shelf,

...so that when it's time to put the room back together you'll know exactly where each thing was before you moved it.

3. Never leave your shopping cart in a parking space,

...or beached on the parking lot tree lawn.

 Always wheel your cart over to the cart corral. It only takes a minute and it's the polite thing to do.

 4. Heed the wisdom of the song and know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. In other words, don’t argue a situation that there’s no way you’re going to win.

 5. Also bear in mind that people can't be talked out of something they want or need to believe in.

6. And if you tell somebody something they disagree with they may argue with you, but if you tell them something that is outside of their perceived reality they won't hear you. At least not the first time you say it.

 7. Patience is not a virtue one is gifted with; it is a discipline that must be practiced and practiced and practiced before one becomes decent at it.

Kind of like shooting baskets.

 8. Blink often. It's good for your eyes.

9. Don't turn a three minute story into a twenty-minute saga.

10. If you're fortunate enough to be able to, it's okay to take an occasional day where you sit around and just do nothing,

Only don't do it too often.

11. When someone else is driving, let them drive. Don't tell them a better way to go, a better way to drive, or give any advice at all unless they ask you for it.

 12. In fact, give advice on any matter only sparingly, only if you truly know what you're talking about, and only if it's wanted.

13.  Here's a really good and easy Spanish dessert called Tarta de Helado:
  Ingredients:
About 1 1/2 (or so) 1.5 liter boxes of vanilla ice cream and  about a little more than one bottle of chocolate shell. (So buy two bottles).

N.B.: Before you use the chocolate shell be sure to let the bottle sit in a bowl of sink-hot water for about five minute then shake it very well!

Method
Take a 9" x 9" ( or bigger or smaller as desired) square dish,

...and cover the bottom with a layer of ice cream.

Cover the ice cream with chocolate shell, which will freeze pretty quickly.

Add another layer of ice cream on top of the shell.

Add one more layer each of shell and ice cream.
Decorate the top ice cream layer with more chocolate shell. Freeze for a little while, maybe 20 minutes or so.

Cut into slices.

Enjoy the rave reviews.

14. Always have two credit cards so you'll have a spare in case one is lost or stolen.

15. Be a forgiving person. That way when you mess up you'll have a better chance of being given some grace.

16. Remember that true wealth lies in having enough money to be able give some away with a glad heart, while true poverty lies in not having enough money to be able to give any away. Or in having enough money to give some away, but not having a generous enough heart to do so.

 Best Wishes, Class of 2026. Be generous, patient, wise and forgiving, and go out and make the world a better place.

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​My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th

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My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th

Thoughts On The Supreme Court's Decision On Birthright Citizenship

Mission San Juan Capistrano, A Beautiful Monument To The Theft Of Land, Lives, And A Culture

Beautiful San Clemente