Opinion

Sam is a lab/brindle mix found in Blackduck, Minn., by some wonderful people who cared enough to go the extra mile for this severely injured dog. They assume he was hit by a car causing damage to his eye.

Dear Amy: One of my friends, “Charles,” has just gotten out of a three-year relationship with his emotionally abusive partner, “Anthony.” Before I understood how abusive Anthony had been, I considered us friends, but I’m no longer comfortable associating with Anthony at all. Normally in this kind of situation where someone’s primary friendship is with one person, the friendship just sort of naturally dissolves when they break up, but Anthony thinks of me as his best friend and is likely to continue, unless I say otherwise.

The good people at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for decades have tried to keep us on the straight and narrow because someone should at least try.

I like machines. Occasionally, usually on the couch, I envision an idyllic future, like the one in The Jetsons, where a robot rolls over to me with a martini. In the timeless classic by Flight of the Concords, the song Robots, set in “the distant future, the year 2000,” it is Man vs. Robot. The song is so good I’m rooting for the robots! And who could forget Short Circuit, the 1986 film starring Steve Guttenberg alongside a delightful robot, No. 5? The picture also gave us the hit single “Who’s Johnny,” by El Debarge. OK, fine. Most people forgot that film but I did not! #neverforget!

Chapter 38 Orrah Jr. was holding a telegram in his hand, and Violet just knew “we had lost our beloved Frankie.” It read “Frank drowned on Harris Lake.” Violet and Orrah were always going to write Frank a personal letter telling him how much they loved him and that they wanted the best for his happiness.

Home, a simple word that strikes a chord deep inside of us. As they say, “Home is where the heart is.” Sometimes home isn’t a physical place any longer. It’s a place in time we long to return to again. Curly Putman wrote a song that has been sung by many people, that Porter Wagoner made popular in 1965, called, “Green, Green of Home” about a man sentenced to die in prison dreaming of home. Is there anything better than the feeling of coming home where your people love you just as you are? Home is forever in our memory. People in prison, hospitals, soldiers serving their country, nursing homes, kids away at camp, anyone physically away from their home place rely on their memory and recognize that deep desire for home. They know that home is often, people.

Our calendars, brand new once again, now date things with a new 2022 number; meaning, when these adventurers’ birthdays roll around this time, numbers will be just two short of four score on this planet. What does an old adventurer think about on new year’s first day when his thermometer reports minus 12 as noon approaches with crystal-clear air and cloudless sky?

Of course, that title could be expanded to the notion that life in itself is an attitude, that’s for sure. But in seasons like this it helps to just acknowledge what that attitude is. A good time to re-check the mind’s fuel tank level and engine performance, so to speak. Speaking of which in regard to our internal attitude and outlook, John Muir, the well-known 19th and 20th century naturalist said something to the effect that “one could regulate the rising and setting of the sun in their own day and adjust the intensity of its brightness,” meaning that given our mind’s ability to think and to appreciate our stream of consciousness, attitude is a choice.