Columns

Even though your house may appear to rest on solid ground, there is still the possibility you may find yourself suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by the rumble of your bedroom floor opening into a massive hole, sliding you and the contents of the room into its pit, interrupting your sweet dreams with dirt and debris.

“I’ve been lonely for quite some time now. It hangs over me like a black cloud and follows me wherever I go. At times I can escape it, but it seems like it always waiting there…”

I’d heard similar confessions before from others. I’ve heard it from my own voice within, at times, too.

People get lonely. Some studies list loneliness as the most common anxiety of people today. Some estimate as many as 50 percent of the population experiences chronic loneliness.

Someone you know is lonely.

Most of us know what it’s like to laugh at the wrong time.

The character Ray Barone in the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond” got himself in a peck of trouble when his wife Debra confided in him that her parents were getting a divorce. Typical of Raymond, instead of being empathic, he found the situation laughable and couldn’t restrain his snicker.

Debra made him pay severely for his faux pas.

Recycling is for old batteries and used motor oil, not failed economic ideas that should have been tossed long ago.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech was filled with such big-government policy retreads that failed to jumpstart sluggish economies in the past, including a recycled attempt to force companies to pay higher wages for low-skilled workers.