RickPage

Tap Dancing in Roller Skates February 28, 2017 If you are old enough to remember, and I AM old enough, roller skates had a primitive ancestor to today's evolutionary masterpiece.  In those bygone days, it could be said that roller skate design was intended to weed out the weak - an intentional survival of the fittest.  Early designs were all-metal, with cleats on the front and straps in the back in order to clamp them onto your street shoes.  The rich kids, and I was NOT a member of said category, could afford to have actual shoes designed for skating.  The wheels were still metal, but you did not have to rely upon thin leather straps, and two half-inch cleats to hold the wheels onto your street shoes.  When new, the leather straps worked extremely well.  Invariably though, the cleats on the front would slip off the soles of my shoes and dangle by the leather strap around my ankle.  Normally, this was the cause of a spill, I would be on my back,...

Raised Up to Look Up February 7, 2017 I guess it's understandable.  After all, we are basically a sponge at birth - soaking up the stimuli afforded by the world around us.  We learn how to trust those around us to guide our way in the first years of life.  Then we spend the remainder of our lives learning how to distrust others.  This life is often contradictory in that manner.  Love is often the field upon which we battle with trust.  We learn to love and speak highly of it, yet as much as is written about love is equally testified to broken love, betrayal and withdrawal of trust. Still, we pursue love.  In the same way we pursue heroes to save us, kings to lead us and idols to inspire us.  Yet the same cycle exists, we discover or heroes have torn capes, our kings often lead where we are unwilling to go, and our idols are tarnished and brittle.  So, as trust is destroyed, we discover a new casualty in humanity's pursuit to cre...