Healthcare on the cheap

In its own way, the picture on the top is probably as instructive as any debate when it comes to lowering the costs of our health-care system.  I just posted the other one because I miss my Aunt Carol.

Studies show that physically active young people are much less likely to have health issues as they age.  When I was a kid, we lived in a lean-to, ate once a month, and I walked 30 miles to school.  Hey, had to exaggerate the "good ol' days."  But one thing most all of us did do was play sports--most all the time.  In the summer when I was 11-12, some neighborhood kids and I would get to a baseball field behind a church by nine and play until it got dark.  Yes, we would break for lunch, unless Mrs. Davis had brough sandwiches.  Fast forward a couple of years and a friend and I were at the Beverly Hills Park, which had a covered cement basketball court, most every day of the summer from sunrise to sunset.  Think about that: playing basketball all day long.  That, folks, is a workout!  And then most of us started playing organized football no later than 13, we all were in Little League, pretty much up to Colt, which I think ended at 16; and a number of us played multiple sports in high school.   We were in great shape.

When I visited Astroworld for what I think was my 14th birthday, a friend and I played a new game called Pong.  It seemed pretty cool, but I wouldn't have traded it for a day at the field or court.  Today, many kids live for their video games.  Moms and dads, you're doing your kids a favor if you buy them a bicycle rather than an X-Box, a basketball instead of the latest version of Halo or World of Warcraft.  Make a deal with 'em if you need to do so.  Tell 'em: You play Little League baseball or on a youth basketball team, and they get their latest video game.  They may not like it, but you'll be practicing good parenting, and they'll thank you later.  

Halloween, late 1960s

My little sister and I. Isn't she a doll?

Look Away (or to), Dixieland?

The University of Mississippi recently eliminated the words, " . . . the South will rise again" from its fight song. Nearly a decade ago Ole Miss banned Confederate battle flags in the football stadium. What to make of all this? Are so-called "politically correct" academic administrators making much ado over nothing, or are they correctly banishing the vestiges of a racist past? Hmm . . . lemme think about it, something I didn't do when I was in my late teens--see below (I'm the guy sitting down):

First Blog

I named my blog "The River Alph" because it is a symbol of inspiration and creativity used by my literary and intellectual hero, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Although he's not a household name, Coleridge has has a profound impact on Western culture. He was an intellectual and literary pioneer, who had a major influence on the development of society, literature, and religion. He and William Wordsworth founded English Romanticism with their work, Lyrical Ballads. Terms such as "the birds and the bees," "a willing suspension of disbelief, "an albatross around his neck," and words like "visualize," "psychoanalysis," and others were coined by STC. In a review of a The Road to Xanadu, a work on Coleridge's amazing imagination, one critic said what literary scholars, philosophers, theologians, and intellectual historians already know: "Coleridge had one of the most extraordinary minds the world has ever seen." So I may touch on some of his ideas in blog posts, but I'll mostly be writing about my views on culture and society, history, literature, film, travel, and maybe a few other things close to my heart, such as Houston Cougar athletics.