Some random comments...

I remember where I was when I heard that JFK was shot but not when I heard that Richard Nixon resigned.

When I was a boy I frequently walked several miles to the public library to take out books with little spaceships on their spines.

Somewhat surprisingly for a lifelong lover of science fiction, I have never had much interest in the space program.

Most of my friends wanted to be athletes when they grew up; I always wanted to be a writer.

Jimmy Carter was probably the finest person to be president of the U.S. in my lifetime; unfortunately, he was probably the least-qualified president until George W. Bush.

I look favorably upon Italian-American celebrities, both such old-timers as Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio and more recent celebrities such as Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. I have a certain amount of disapproval though towards those who change their names so as not to sound Italian, such as Billy Martin, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett.

My list of favorite musicians started with Dion and progressed through the Dave Clark 5, Moody Blues, Bruce Springsteen, Chris de Burgh, and currently is Richard Thompson.

Cell phones annoy me. How ridiculous is it that so many people walk around with phones glued to their ears like another appendage? What the heck do they have to say all the time anyway? And how selfish are people whose cell phones ring in the middle of meetings, then they answer them and begin talking right during the meeting!!

The fact that so many people choose to be connected much of their lives, via either ipods or cell phones, is evidence that those people are not comfortable with their own thoughts, and would rather live their lives on a surface level rather than spending time actually thinking.