If you're lucky, sometimes the beauty just blows you away

With all the actors and actresses we know, there are roles in which we can envision them and others we can never imagine them playing.

A perfect example:

Hugh Grant, cannibal

Hugh Grant as the chieftain of a tribe of cannibals in what used to be Hawaii.

Now that's entertainment.

To be fair, the cannibal is only one of six roles Grant plays in the amazing "Cloud Atlas," the Wachowski's 2012 film that didn't really find an audience but may end up being better remembered than any of the popular films of the same time.

"Cloud Atlas" is based on a novel by David Mitchell and it tells six stories in six different settings over a period of nearly 500 years.

All the stories relate to the others, and one simple act of kindness in the first story resonates down through the centuries. Grant isn't the star. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving all play a variety of roles, and others including Susan Sarandon are all over the narrative as well.

Hanks has a marvelous time of it, playing the heavy in the first story, an amazingly lowbrow writer with a unique way of treating critics in another and a confused everyman in the final, dystopian story.

South Korean actress Doona Bae is transcendent as a clone who dares to be an individual and winds up as the focus of a new religion. When she says, "Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future," she basically gives us the point of Mitchell's story.

Then there is the dark side of life, and something that passes for a philosophy among the predators of the world.

"There is only one rule that binds all people, one governing principle that define's every relationship on God's green earth: The meek are meat, and the strong do eat."

As much as some people want to believe that's how the world works, it doesn't have to be. When the protagonist in the first story tells his angry father-in-law that he will devote his life to good works, the angry response is that he will never be more than a single drop in a limitless ocean. His response is to ask "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"

I have been watching movies for more than 50 years, and there are very few anymore that really surprise me. So many of today's films are remakes, sequels or rehashes of stories told time and again that all you can really do is appreciate good craftsmanship.

But once in a long while, something really unique comes along, something that takes you to a place you've never been before. I watched "Cloud Atlas" for the first time Saturday and watched it again today. It absolutely blows me away; I can't remember the last time I saw something so wonderful.

I was very happy to see that my favorite of all film critics, Roger Ebert, had the opportunity to view and review "Cloud Atlas" before he died. It wasn't that I needed him to help me understand the film, but I certainly was happy to see that he thought it was every bit as wonderful as I did."

From Ebert:

"But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema. And what an opportunity for the actors. And what a leap by the directors, who free themselves from the chains of narrative continuity. And then the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames makes perfect sense."

Some songs bring back memories of more than just people

When Stephen King writes about the '60s, he rarely fails to mention how much the music mattered.

In "Hearts in Atlantis," which was basically a book about the '60s, he referred to the music as the "fabled automatic," and said that all these years later, it never fails to lift his spirits. King is two years older than I am, so he had the first two years of his twenties in that frenetic decade. I turned 20 just three weeks before the '60s ended.

Add in my late blooming socially and in some ways, the '70s were really more significant to me. But there are songs from both decades that not only remind me of the time but of a very specific place.

An example:

Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" was popular in late 1972, and whenever I hear it, it's as if I'm sitting in the back seat of Chris Gullotta's station wagon heading to Georgetown. We were double-dating. I was with a girl named Kathy Ward that I went out with two of three times; his date was the girl I married 2 1/2 years later.

"Dancing Queen" was a worldwide hit for Abba in 1977, and when I hear it, I'm in a bowling alley in Vienna, Austria, where I bowled in an American league while we were living there.

The Beach Boys' "I Get Around" evokes a memory for me of being on my way to the store to buy my first pair of white Levis in the summer of 1965.

With a few other songs, it isn't even the original version that brings out the memories. In 1971 and 1972, my friends Chris Worth and Chris Gullotta were going out two or three nights a week to a great club just off Connecticut Avenue called The Montage. The house band, the Eye, did great covers of a lot of songs, and when I hear "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" or "Witchy Woman," it's their covers and that club I remember.

Sadly, that was one of the first casualties of construction when they started building the Metro.

These aren't the songs that meant the most to me, the ones various girlfriends and wives and I considered "our songs." Those are different and will always be important to me.

But it's the songs like the ones mentioned above that are my "fabled automatics" and always will be.

One decision nice, but the one that really matters was wrong

There will be plenty of people who will tell you the two decisions handed down by the Supreme Court this week -- on voting rights and same-sex marriage -- at least got the one right that will have the biggest effect on people's lives.

After all, everybody knows that discrimination against minorities ended a long time ago in this country.

Right?

If only it were true. There have been so many examples of Republicans trying to make it more difficult for minorities to vote in recent years that taking away weapons to fight against that seems very politically motivated.

It's the last thing the Supreme Court needs after so many bizarre decisions in recent years -- Bush v. Gore, Citizens United and others -- have made the court look politically motivated.

Yes, it's nice that the court basically said that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act was something Congress had no business passing, and certainly millions of Americans will be happy that the question of same-sex marriage will be left to the states.

But once again, we get distracted by lesser issues while the question of who really runs the country keeps shifting more and more toward corporations. It certainly appears as if an effort is being made to keep the Republican Party as strong as possible for as long as possible despite demographics that show the GOP is fading away.

In fact, it may be that the last gasp of the Republican Party will be in the Supreme Court. That's why the next vacancy -- particularly if it's one of the so-called conservative seats -- might be the moral equivalent of nuclear war.

These people will not go quietly.

After all, it was their most recent nominee who told us that "Corporations are people too, my friend."

Ten seasons of 'Smallville' told a really good story

I have watched a lot of television shows on DVD, but most of the ones I really like haven't lasted too many seasons.

"Studio 60" only lasted one year and "Sports Night" just two. There have been others that have lasted three, five and even seven years, but I hadn't ever watched one that was on longer than that.

Until "Smallville."

Yes, it had its shortcomings. I think one critic referred to it as "Superboy meets Dawson's Creek," and yes, there were lots of beautiful teenagers with high-powered libidos, and who knew that Metropolis was really Kansas City?

I'm not sure anyone expected it to last 10 full seasons, but we watched Clark Kent grow from awkward ninth grader to a young man on the verge of being super.

The fascinating thing about the story is that the creators weren't afraid to take the original Superboy story, told in hundreds of comic books, and throw out parts of it.

Certainly the biggest change came in the fact that we never heard him called Superboy. In fact, Clark doesn't go public until the seventh or eighth season of the show, and he never actually flies or wears the famous red and blue suit until the series finale.

One of the most fascinating changes is that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor start out as close friends, both living in Smallville, Kansas. But Lex is so obsessed with his own destiny that he eventually becomes Clark's greatest enemy.

Not everything always made sense, and it certainly slipped over into soap operadom too many times. But if there is one thing the series proved, it's that the best stories are always about the best characters, and Superman has always been an iconic American character.

Even as a Kansas farmboy.

A little variety in golf courses can make for a lot of fun

There's one thing difficult about living two blocks away from a golf course.

It's tough to get motivated to play anywhere except there.

When I became a member at Sun City Peachtree, where I can play 18 holes for $8 any weekday and $10 any weekend, I also was given the same status at two other clubs. Heron Bay in Locust Grove is 10 miles away and Georgia National in McDonough is 15 miles from here.

So in the last 2 1/2 years, I played Sun City several hundred times and never once made my way to either of the other two.

Until Thursday.

Thursday I went out to play nine holes, but the course was jammed. So I drove over to Heron Bay and played nine holes. It was enjoyable enough that Friday I went back and played 18.

I was lucky enough to be the first one out after a tournament, so I was able to zip through 18 holes in less than 2 1/2 hours.

It's a very different course than I'm accustomed to playing. Heron Bay has so many bunkers that by the time I reached the back nine I was expecting to see camels.

My second times out, I played the front nine pretty well, shooting a 43. The back nine was tougher and I was tired on a hot, muggy day, and I only shot 50. Still, 93 the first time around on a new, tougher course wasn't really horrible.

I'll try it again. Ten miles isn't that far to drive for a little variety.

I may even drive over to McDonough and try the other one.

Freedom is a great concept, but it doesn't always work

A lot of people have been complaining that government keeps encroaching on our freedoms. They say we're heading toward a totalitarian state.

The problem is far more complex than most people seem to believe, though.

The real problem is that we have more freedom than we can handle.

When the Founding Fathers put together our government, someone asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government it would be. "A republic, if you can keep it," Franklin reportedly said.

But how do you keep a republic when 20 percent of adults are functionally illiterate and another 20 percent aren't even literate enough to balance a checkbook or read a prescription? When 65 percent of adults proudly say they haven't read a book since finishing high school?

You see, along with freedom comes responsibility. I have quoted the late great H.L. Mencken time and again about his 1922 essay in which he said the American republic would not last another 100 years. Mencken cited ignorance and greed as the two factors that would cause our downfall.

Ignorance is by far the bigger problem. I don't have any problem with anyone who decided not to vote for Barack Obama, but anybody who claims he wasn't born in this country or that he's secretly a Muslim loses my respect.

The more ignorant voters are, the easier it is to sell them on ridiculous ideas like tax cuts for the rich helping everyone. In 2002, when President Dubya Bush was pushing massive tax cuts that reserved 48 percent of its benefits for the top 1 percent, Gallup did a fascinating survey. Seventeen percent of those polled thought they were part of the top 1 percent and another 25 percent thought they would be someday.

Of course, you can't require intelligence tests for voting. For one thing, there isn't any test that could be devised that wouldn't discriminate against someone. We live in a country where people are educated more to follow the rules than to challenge them. A country where more people could identify Honey Boo Boo or the Kardashians than members of the president's cabinet.

But what does all this have to do with too much freedom?

Well, surprisingly, the people and entities that inform us are not required by any sort of laws to tell us the truth. Obviously some issues are matters of opinion and without absolute truth, but there are other things that are proven facts and we ought to be able to accept them.

But whether it's a cable news channel, a squawk radio commentator or someone writing on the Internet, anyone can lie with impunity and probably never have it come back to haunt them. And if someone is considered a public figure, it's possible to say all sorts of vile things about them and never have to pay a price.

Back during Bill Clinton's first term, the Rev. Jerry Falwell was hawking a truly disgusting film called "The Clinton Chronicles" in which the president was accused of dealing cocaine and killing dozens of people while he was governor of Arkansas.

Of course, Falwell took it in the shorts himself in the '80s when Larry Flynt ran a fairly distasteful parody in his "Hustler" magazine in which Falwell was accused of losing his virginity in an outhouse with his mother.

Too much freedom?

Maybe, but you certainly have to ask yourself if we're a better country because we're free to read almost anything anyone wants to write. Particularly in the case of the Internet, where it is so easy for people to remain anonymous, people who live far beyond the pale -- child molesters, for example -- are able to communicate with others like them. There's no possible way that sort of freedom makes us a better country.

Franklin was right.

It's a republic, but I think we may be on the verge of losing it.

We need to get smarter -- and maybe a little less greedy too.

This kid is going to have the most amazing memories

I don't remember what it was like to be 19 months old. I don't know anyone who has memories that go that far back.

But if I did, I would certainly hope I had as good a time as my grandson Lexington Kastner seems to be having. He won't be 2 until November, but every time I see him, he seems to be having a blast.

Two things he seems to enjoy a lot are pushing a broom around and using a toilet plunger, so he might be planning for a future as the world's greatest janitor.

Of course, when I was just a little older than he was, I dreamed of a career as Tuesday Weld's towel boy.

Before he was a year old, Lex had circumnavigated the globe. I was 17 before I flew anywhere and 26 before I made it out of North America.

I was in 11th grade before I tried to learn a language other than English that was spoken somewhere in the world. Lex is being raised bilingually, learning French and English.

He's lucky that he has such a good big sister. Madison, formerly the Amazing Baby, will be 5 in September and she seems really to enjoy hanging out with Lex and teaching him things.

The two of them are going to lead lives far more interesting than the average American kid. Madison was born in Beijing and has already lived in Indonesia and Jamaica. Lex was born in Seattle and has already lived in Indonesia and Jamaica.

More Americans than not never travel outside the United States. Neither of my two closest friends have ever been outside North America, and there are very few people who ever travel as widely as my parents did when my dad was still alive.

My grandchildren will have a much better perspective on the world than most Americans. When people make ridiculous statements like even the poor in America living better than the middle class in Europe or anywhere else, they won't fall for it.

I don't know what the world will be like when Madison and Lexington grow to adulthood. Unless I lead a very long life, I probably won't be around to see it. I'll probably never meet their spouses or their children.

So I'll just enjoy them while I can.

***

Republicans may be outraged about Benghazi, but an awful lot of them -- including the governor of Texas -- don't even know where it is.

Money seems to be disappearing. Some companies now are only paying their employees with debit cards.

It's hard for me to believe that Americans would elect yet another Bush president, but the sad part is that Jeb might actually be the best one in the family.

America isn't the only place with exceptionalism. Check out what The Onion has to say about another one.

And once again, arrivederci till tomorrow.

As we get older, things change in our lives

There are so many things we take for granted when we're young.

Things we lose when we're older. When I was 18 or 19, I was a pretty good basketball player. I was a streaky shooter, but when I was on, I could sink four or five 20-footers in a row. But when I took my basketball and went out onto the outdoor court here at Sun City last week, I couldn't make a shot from more than three feet.

That doesn't particularly bother me. Whether or not I can still play basketball at age 63 is real low on my list of concerns. I never had better than mediocre jumping ability, and now my vertical leap isn't more than an inch or two.

What I miss a lot more is not being able to eat some of the things I used to love, particularly late at night. In my early 20s, my friends and I used to close down the bars in Georgetown at 2 a.m. and then go out for pizza.

I remember 1970 in particular. It was the first time in my life that I had a real girlfriend, and there were plenty of times we found ourselves at Mario's Pizza in Arlington. The pizza came in squares, not slices, and I seem to remember they were 35 cents each that spring.

We would eat the pizza and then I'd drive her back to her dorm and head home myself.

I always slept great.

Now if I eat anything that isn't completely bland after about 8 p.m., I'm up half the night. Of course, I'm not going out to nightclubs, bars or even the movies late in the evening. Most nights, I find myself in bed by 10 p.m.

When I was home three years ago, I went by Mario's and had a couple of squares. I enjoyed them, but it wasn't the same as it was in 1970.

It reminds me of an old song.

I could get back to the place, but not the time.

Such is life.

It's a shame when the reality doesn't match the ideal

When I was a kid in school in the 1950s and '60s, we were taught that the most important thing in the world was being able to vote for the kind of government we wanted.

It didn't have to be a democracy or even a republic. In fact, they taught us that the only reason we were opposed to communism was that the people who lived under it didn't have the right to choose it for themselves.

If a country ever voted to become communist, they told us, that would be fine with us.

Of course we were like mushrooms back then. They fed us all sorts of shit and kept us in the dark.

We learned the real truth of that in 1973, when the Nixon administration backed a coup in Chile to oust Salvador Allende, the first Marxist ever to be freely elected in Latin America. Allende was doing the one thing the U.S. wouldn't tolerate, nationalizing many industries and collectivizing others. We financed the coup and the CIA provided other assistance.

There were hundreds of U.S. businesses with financial interests in Chile, and our government wasn't about to allow Allende to take all that away. We took away Chile's democracy and left the Chileans living under a military dictatorship.

Whether they voted for it or not.

Of course this wasn't the first time this had happened. We have always seen the Western Hemisphere as our own little fiefdom. Just ask the folks in Honduras, Nicaragua and the other countries in which we intervened again and again. Legendary Marine General Smedley Butler -- one of a very few men to win the Medal of Honor twice -- once called war "a racket" and said that every time he was sent outside the U.S., he knew he was protecting American business interests.

Our ideals are a fine thing, but making money and protecting property is what really matters.

I don't know how many of you remember the stunning 1982 film "Missing," directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, but it was an extremely impressive look at just that.

Lemmon plays an American businessman whose son has been living with his daughter-in-law in Chile during the coup that ousted Allende. His son has vanished and the son's wife, played by Spacek, has been unable to learn anything.

He flies down from New York with complete belief in the goodness of the U.S. government and its representatives in Chile. He is actually annoyed with his daughter-in-law and his missing son because they don't have the same beliefs he does. As the plot unfolds, we see him become more and more disillusioned when he realizes that the reason his son may have been arrested was that he had learned that U.S. military personnel and CIA agents were involved in making the coup work.

Forty years later, after Watergate, Iran-Contra and the conquest-minded Dubya Bush administration, it's hard to believe that people would have been shocked. But the generation gap of the late '60s and early '70s -- when parents and the children were on opposite sides of the great divide -- changed the country in a very real way.

The movie didn't do much business, which shouldn't surprise anyone. It wasn't made to entertain, but to inform. The version available now on DVD has been cut from the original version. Most of the cuts were shots of corporate logos, showing just how deeply American businesses were invested in Chile.

This isn't to say we're an evil, horrible country. The ideals on which we were founded were worthwhile indeed, but things started to get off the track when massive fortunes were amassed during the Industrial Revolution. Ever since then, the story of this country has been a struggle between the mega-wealthy and the rest of us.

It may be a struggle that will never end.

***

Can "Happy Birthday" really be copyrighted?

Got $24 million to spare? There are some terrific homes for sale in Malibu.

The Onion has some great last-minute Fathers Day gifts.

The movie came out nearly 40 years ago, but Panini America is putting some members of the original Bad News Bears into its 2013 Golden Age baseball set.

Auf wiedersehen till tomorrow.

'Once Upon a Time' is entertainment from a surprising place

I had been looking forward to the release of the first season of Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" ever since I saw the Jeff Daniels clip that had gone viral on the Internet.

I have been a fan of Sorkin's ever since the first episode of "The West Wing," and I watched every episode of "Sports Night" on DVD and also of the one season of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Seven seasons of "West Wing" were enough, but I would have loved to see additional seasons of the other two.

So I picked up "The Newsroom" on Tuesday, and brought it home to start watching.

It was strange, though. Before I was halfway through the episode, I lost interest and decided it could wait for another time. I decided instead to watch another show that I had picked up on a whim.

The other show was one that has been on ABC for two years, but I had never heard of it until I saw the DVD. The premise behind it is either one of the most original in years or the most ridiculous. I still haven't decided which, even though I've watched most of the first season.

Would you watch a show in which all the characters from famous fairy tales were banished to our world without the knowledge of who they were? That's a simplified explanation of "Once Upon a Time," which will begin its third season this fall.

Jennifer Morrison plays Emma, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who finds herself in Storybrooke (get it?), Maine, the town where all the characters are trapped.

Of course she doesn't know who her parents are, and when she's told, she doesn't believe. None of the characters know who they were, other than the two villains. The mayor, Regina Mills, is the Evil Queen who got Snow White to eat the apple, and local mogul Mr. Gold is actually Rumplestiltskin.

It all sounds incredibly goofy, but I can't get enough of it. Season Two will be out on DVD in late August, and I'm actually considering making this the first show I watch on live television since "24" went off the air.

That doesn't mean it's a good show. There are plenty of bad shows I've enjoyed.

But it's a lot more entertaining than "The Newsroom."
'

Remembering the most wonderful place to go to concerts

I don't know if there was ever a better place to see concerts than the Cellar Door.

For 16 years, from 1965 to 1981, this little hole in the wall club in Georgetown attracted some of the top musical talents in the country. It had a capacity of only 163, so it wasn't going to attract big crowds and it wasn't a big enough room for full bands to play. Still, most of the best singer/songwriter types played there, including Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffett, Jim Croce, John Denver, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and a long list of others.

The word was that performers enjoyed playing the Door so much that they would accept less than their usual fee. I don't know if that was true, but it was an amazing place to see concerts.

I saw Linda Ronstadt there twice, and I was so close to the stage when I saw Rita Coolidge perform that I could literally have reached out and touched her.

I saw some pretty fair comedians there as opening acts, Gabe Kaplan and David Brenner among them, and I saw the late Steve Goodman there as an opening act for someone I have long since forgotten.

It has been 32 years since the club closed, and I understand there's a fast-food franchise on the original location. Still, more than half a lifetime ago, I have some wonderful memories.

The one show I will never forget was in 1973, when I saw legendary folk singer Phil Ochs in his final appearance in the D.C. area. Ochs was in a really bad place at the time, and his voice was almost gone. He rasped his way through some of his most wonderful songs, and what was really wonderful about it was that nearly everyone in the audience really loved his music.

We made him sing three encores before we let him go.

Three years later, he was dead by his own hand.

I'm not sure, but I think that was the last concert I ever saw at the Door.

***

A bizarre take on the George Zimmerman trial, courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a big splash in her first two days on Twitter.

The big story in show business this week is the impending opening of the latest Superman movie, "Man of Steel." Of course the real question is whether Hollywood will ever get past its remake/sequel mania and start making good original movies.

A look at how the media establishment has become way too conservative in its reaction to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden

Tim Tebow may have signed with the New England Patriots, but the chance that he'll ever play quarterback as long as Tom Brady can walk is slim indeed.

For those folks who just don't want to believe that about Liberace, The Onion comes through with an explanation.

I was always a huge "West Wing" fan, and because I liked Aaron Sorkin's writing, I watched both seasons of "Sports Night" and the only season of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Now the first season of "The Newsroom" is out on DVD and I find myself wondering -- other than "West Wing," will Sorkin ever do another television show that isn't about television shows?

Au revoir till tomorrow.

'Outrage' over data mining is a case of too little, too late

I can't help but be amused at all the faux outrage being displayed at the news that the government might be listening in on phone calls or reading e-mails.

After all, sauce for the goose ...

When Congress passed the Patriot Act less than two months after the Sept. 11th attacks, there wasn't a whole lot of dissent or even discussion. The bill was introduced one day, passed the House of Representatives by a 357-66 vote the next day and passed the Senate by a 98-1 vote the day after.

I don't remember if anyone even bothered to mention old Ben Franklin's well-known warning that people willing to surrender freedom for security would wind up with neither.

Someone must have.

Of course, we had already surrendered all sorts of freedom long before 2001. It's tough to imagine anyone not objecting to being injected with a chip that would tell the government where they were at all times. But that's effectively what you do if you carry a cellphone. Nearly all cellphones include GPS chips, which ostensibly enable them to help you get from one place to the other.

And of course cellphone calls are extremely easy to listen in on. Essentially they're radio transmissions, and anyone who can find your frequency can listen in on what you're saying.

Don't even get me started on e-mail. Anyone who believes their e-mails are secure should wake up. If you put a letter in an envelope, seal it, stamp it and drop it in a mailbox, you've got a chance to get it through to its destination without any snooping. If you write an e-mail and hit SEND, you have no idea what copies of it are going where.

So what's it all about? Most of what is happening is called Data Mining, where computers are programmed to react to certain code words that might be clues to terrorist activity. That's all well and good -- if you trust the government to act responsibly.

These days, though, nobody seems to want to trust anyone on the opposite side of an issue. When Republicans held the levers of power, conservatives were pretty much okay with Gee Dubya Bush and Dick Cheney protecting them from terrorists. But with Democrats running the government, they don't much like it.

It all depends on whose Al is gored.

If there's one thing that has been a bit of a surprise to people who voted for him in 2008 and again in 2012, it's how conservative President Obama has turned out to be. He certainly wouldn't be part of the modern conservative movement, which would look at Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and see dangerous liberals. But he passed a health care plan that was originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and his national security stance would be in the same neighborhood as mid-century Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Don't expect much to change. Once you give away freedoms, they're awfully hard to get back.

And America isn't about to elect a real liberal who would push back.

After all, anyone in Washington will tell you that the War on Terror is never going to end.

Still trying to make a difference in a small way

I wish I could explain -- if only to myself -- why it has become so difficult to write these days.

It has been nearly three months since my most recent post on the original One Voice site, and after all sorts of problems with that site, I finally decided I would just have to archive that and start fresh somewhere else.

That I've turned back to Blogger is a surprise even to me. I stopped writing with Blogger four years ago when I switched to Wordpress, which I felt was more advanced and could do more. But Wordpress has been unable to deal with the biggest problem I've had -- being user-friendly toward people who want to comment -- and I decided to switch back.

Now all I need is something to write about.

I don't much feel like writing about politics. I'm disgusted enough with politics to believe what H.L. Mencken wrote in 1922. Mencken said he didn't think the American republic would last another hundred years, and the two things that would bring it down would be ignorance and greed. I think we've already lost a lot when you see that senators representing about 13 percent of the nation's population can block almost anything from going forward.

The media has become almost worthless in sorting out truth from lies. It amazes me that someone can say something that's an out-and-out falsehood and the media will just treat it as one side against another.

Do I care? I wish I didn't. I wish I could just take the attitude of "I've got mine, Jack," and let the politicians squabble over who controls what. But I keep remembering that old saying about us getting the government we deserve, and I fear for the future.

If there's one thing evident in all the recent news about warrantless data mining, it's that there really isn't that much difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to security issues. If it's a matter of holding and retaining power, neither party is better than the other. There are just as many Democrats getting rich because of serving in Congress as there are Republicans.

Neither party is particularly responsive to its constituents. Unless, that is, you understand that the real constituency for both parties consists of the mega-donors who pay the cost of campaigning.

Meanwhile, average people -- the vast majority of people in the country -- simply write off the government as an annoyance, something to be gotten around. The only things that really get them worked up are non-issues like same-sex marriage, school prayer and legalization of marijuana.

Too many people no longer read. Their only exposure to the news is through television or talk radio, and there are very few unbiased sources. Whether it's MSNBC on the left or Fox on the right, the news comes with a slant.

So what do we do? Is it even possible any more to avoid where we seem to be headed? And can one voice, one more voice, make any kind of difference at all?

Honestly, I don't know. I no longer think in big terms. I no longer believe that my voice, my words, can change the overall world. But I still do think I can have the same effect as the guy walking down the beach littered with starfish and putting them back in the water, one by one.

I can make a difference for that one.

And that one.

***

I don't know if the post just completed will draw any comments at all, but with the new site, I have linked into one of the best of the commenting systems. Partly it's a desire to avoid spam -- the original One Voice seemed to draw thousands and thousands of spam comments.

I'm hoping Disqus will put a stop to that, and draw good comments as well.

***

Another thing I'm hoping to do with the new site is provide links to things I find interesting. I intend to be fairly eclectic with this -- politics, sports, entertainment, family, all sorts of fun stuff.

-- Ten Things Most Americans Don't Know About America is a really insightful post by an expatriated American. Sean Curran, one of the brightest young people I know, brought it to my attention. It's a must read for people who have never really been outside this country.

-- My California friend Kay Murphy, one of the best teachers I know, has a piece on how sometimes wonderful things happen when you're not expecting them.

-- If there's one thing no one who grew up in the '60s would have figured, it's that Star Trek would still be going strong after nearly 50 years. The original series barely made it through three seasons and was never anything remotely resembling a hit. But it became a major phenomenon more than 10 years later when the movies started. Of course there have been four other series, and now the original series is into its second incarnation with younger actors. "Star Trek Into Darkness" looks like a big hit, so the odds are there will be even more movies.

Till tomorrow, adios.