Electoral Math: Hillary May Have Won After All!

                So Hillary supporters got quite a shock yesterday, not so much because she lost an election in which she had widely been considered to be a shoo-in, but because all the many polls and indicators which showed that she would almost certainly win turned out to be quite completely wrong.  Or were they?

The Push for the Big 6-0!

                Tomorrow (okay, today!  I had hoped to publish this before midnight but missed by 12 minutes) is what has been arguably described in most circles as the most important presidential election in our lifetime.  For the Hillary supporters, it’s a clear choice between the superior competence of a highly intelligent candidate with 30 years of public service experience versus the total incompetence, total lack of government experience, downright awful ignorance, dangerous policy positions, and bigotry of her opponent.  To the Trump supporters, it is a very clear choice between a totally maverick outsider whom they totally trust to fix everything that’s wrong with the country or continuing with the corruption, lies, and special interests that they so strongly believe characterize the Clinton candidacy.  Despite this historically wide divide and the fact that the two candidates could not be further apart, there are still (unbelievably in my opinion) the undecided voters, and there are enough of them that they hold the potential for swinging the election either way. 

Freaky Freebies

Saturday night was the 75th anniversary gala at Our Lady of Refuge and also the rather inauspicious premiere of my latest video, a 20 minute history of 75 years at OLR.  It was quite disappointing.  After nine months and many, many hours of planning, photography and editing, AD really made no effort at all to publicize this very nice little production.

Ashes Fly!

                It’s been a busy week, the introductory course in financial planning is behind me and the wheels have been set in motion to find a placement for an internship.  The next course begins on Tuesday but I am putting the odds at 50/50 that Monday will bring an email that the class has been canceled for lack of sufficient enrollment, just as it was last time.  Meanwhile, in my last post I lamented that I had had a serious computer fart while submitting “Ash Wednesday” to my very first screenplay contest and thought I had ruined my chances.  I have taken delivery of my new computer but since it is missing some essential components, I continue to work on my laptop.  Since this debacle began, I have been sending weekly updates on Sunday but, today is September 30^th and, as was pointed out in last week’s update, September 30^th this year was destined to be special.  It turned out to be special in more ways than one.  So because of the special things that happened today, I am sending this week’s update on Friday instead.  The day’s events can be summed up handily in two words – Ashes Fly!

58 Hours: The Ecstasy and the Agony

It was just about 5 p.m. last Tuesday that my life changed, at least for this week.  I had just returned from Dr. C where we discussed my status in the CFP and the path I would be on for at least the next two years assuming things go well on September 21^st (or at least don’t go disastrously.)  I opened my email and found the announcement from MovieBytes.com about this screenplay competition in L.A. for which the deadline for submission is midnight L.A. time on Thursday, some 58 hours hence. 

Computer (& other) Updates

So come this Sunday, I have been without my Dell desktop, and subsequently practical use of email, for three weeks.  My tech called me yesterday to inform me the old Dell was shot and I needed a new computer.  I’m going in on Monday to lay out the specs and likely have him build me my new desktop.  I probably won’t have more details as to when I’ll be back online until after Monday’s meeting.  Meanwhile the CFP is consuming all my time.  This has been so much more difficult that I had been lead to believe but I am nonetheless loving it and looking forward to great things.  This posting is an update on both the computer issues and the constitution of this introductory CFP course. 

My Views on Patriotism - A Post 4th of July Post

So I’ve had a very busy week and this is getting out a few days late.  But last weekend my sister sent me a very entertaining animated video, in honor of our Independence Day (or as she liked to put it, our “Interdependence Day”), in which the famed progressive economist Robert Reich proposed his definition of what genuine patriotism was really all about. 

Giving Birth to a 15 Pound Baby (23 Years In Labor)

For those of you who may not yet have heard, April 29^th was a very special day for me.  Many of you have already received the announcement of the completion of my screenplay, “Ash Wednesday,” a project on which I’ve labored for 23 years, June 1993 to be exact.  At the beginning of this year, I had a banker box full of research, notes, and a nearly 400 page first draft, plus a separate box containing a 450 page second draft.  I had to reduce this all to a 120 page third draft that I could then share with industry professionals to initiate the process of a final polish.  My baby had become roughly 15 pounds of paper that I had to squeeze into a space a fraction of that size. 

The Week That Wasn’t (but was supposed to be)

                Some of you may remember the popular TV news magazine program from the 1960s that predated “60 Minutes” called “This Was the Week That Was.”  Well, for me, this felt like the week that wasn’t, even though it was supposed to be.  This is to say that six weeks ago today (December 17^th) I got an email from Oakland University that changed my entire life plan and sort of put everything else on hold for the next month as I tried to figure out what was going on and how I was going to manage.  

Manresa 2016

So it’s been since last May that I made a posting, at that time to announce my new documentary about pianist Vladimir Horowitz.  I have since turned the documentary over to West Bloomfield’s municipal cable TV station Civic Center TV and will be collaborating with them this winter on a modified version that they will show on the channel, thereby multiplying my viewers from the few dozen who have seen it on YouTube to perhaps thousands more.