Straight From The Hart

This is a heads-up to all my readers that I am planning to write a novel.  All best-selling novels contain unforgettable and quotable dialogue and mine will be no different.  I already have the dialogue down pat, but I’m still working on the plot. The dialogue goes this way.  First of all the protagonist will say “You can keep your doctor, period.  You can keep your hospital, period.  You can keep your policy, period.” I’m going to use the word “period” so emphatically  because I want to stress how absolute and immutable these promises are. Then he will say, “All of this will not add one thin dime to our national debt.” I will also have an antagonist with a memorable line of dialogue:  "....the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because some guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” Then I’m thinking perhaps we cou...

Monday will be Memorial Day.  The mere mention  of the holiday generates swirls of memories in my mind.  Our observance of the day has probably undergone more changes in the seven decades I have lived than any other holiday we have throughout the year.  Tradition tells us it started as a way to honor the Civil War dead, but soon included all military graves, and now we decorate the graves of friends and family, too. Graves have been replaced by urns containing  ashes, and today many people have memorial services instead of funerals.  I’m not making a judgment with regard to that, just recognizing that once again things that were familiar to me so long ago are becoming more rare today,  like the fact that it is mostly the older generation who now decorates the graves. My Grandma Dame always called it Decoration Day.  That was back when we observed it on May 30, regardless of what day  of the week it fell on.   I  disli...