The June Gloom, which follows May Gray, is real here in Southern California. The weather can affect one's mood, as you possibly already know. It feels like a physical manifestation of the sadness I feel about what has been happening in our country lately. The news has recently focused on several mass murders, an escaped convict who brutally killed three young boys and their grandfather, and countless individuals murdered by people they loved and supposed to protect them from

What I have to say may not resonate with people who like/love guns. I don't care. That stupid adage about guns not killing people and that people kill people pisses me off. Guns kill people. The GOP blames the mentally ill, too many doors, not enough God, "liberal" teachers, wokeness (their stupid made-up word) what a bunch of crap. Innocent people were slaughtered in a grocery store in Buffalo, a church hall in Orange County, CA, on the streets of Chicago (almost every week

Time stops the moment a doctor tells you or your loved one that there isn't much they can do to prolong life. But then, the earth shatters around you, and you start to fall down, down, down swallowed up by the enormity of your grief. For me, it happened consciously the first time with my little boy Cory's leukemia diagnosis at age three. I swear the bottom dropped out of my world. I plunged ass over teakettle through space. I remember wanting to cry out, but I was alert enou