Feeling challenged in more than one way, I'm recommending the 2022 movie Close as one of the best films in years. It directly reminded me of a past Inappropriate Conversations podcast with Mark Greene as the Different Drummer. His work, and the director of Close, directly refer to this episode's Different Drummer, too.  I was reminded of my childhood, at the same age as the central characters in the film, and a sense of disconnection that came from a change in school districts. I also was challenged by how our defense mechanisms seem to presume something inappropriate (directly or indirec ..read more

"Each juror who is seated in the jury box will be asked to answer the following 42 questions." Well, what would you do if called to answer these questions? That can be answered. What I don't know is whether my answers would have kept me in the jury pool or not.  Different Drummer: S. Epatha Merkerson #IC 113: Raised On Robbery ..read more

In 1986, I wrote an essay in a letter exchange with a friend. I haven't shared it here. Reasons why aren't important. I called it "Love and Contemporary Inter-Sexual Friendship" and many of the concepts noted in this podcast -- and, to be fair, other past podcasts -- reflect the same ideas as that essay written almost four decades ago. These thoughts are both conscious and subconscious, which will be obvious from this dream scenario.  I do not view friendship as a give-to-get concept. I don't keep score, or I try not to. My beliefs are focused on creating better relationships, a better s ..read more

Perhaps without thinking it through, the Alabama supreme court has taken conservative pro-life arguments about "personhood" to a logical extreme. The initial result was banning all in vitro fertilization procedures in the state, their jurisdiction. The Alabama legislature may believe they have "saved the day" by quickly passing a law to shield those using IVF from prosecution or consequences, but they've done so by deciding which "children" in their state can be killed with impunity. If the hastily passed legislation doesn't sound sufficiently pro-life, that's because it is not.  All of ..read more

As a journalism student in 1983, I already knew that I had no interested in television news. I could see the direction cable "24 hour news" networks were going, and I didn't like it. Perhaps there were signs I wasn't happy with a newspaper career path either. It wasn't clear to me then, though, how much truth gets revealed through fiction ..read more

Surrealism or Dadaism can be as simple as having a strange dream and writing it down, or close to it.  Apologies, pun intended, if "Make Up" is merely that simple. I won't try to make it something more with compromise or cosmetics ..read more

"Sounds Like a Serious Offense" has not come up before in poetry-focused episodes of Inappropriate Conversations, and that's mainly due to the use of rape as a literary comparison. It's uncomfortable, and I would never want to dilute the meaning of such a heinous crime. Having said that, I've had conversations with people of both genders who have been used, manipulated, and socially shunned. This is how they feel ..read more

Accepting the notion of Eternal Now from Boethius and others, we have known the people we love most deeply for much longer than we acknowledge or understand. "A Belated Happy Birthday ..read more

How we read a poem and how we read a hymn are very different things. Mixing that up intentionally can produce interesting, or taxing, results. "Tithe ..read more

In perhaps an equal and opposite reaction to Valentine's Day as a concept, the poem "Unrequited Love" is -- whether romantic or not -- deeply sad, in my opinion. It's open to interpretation, of course. One interpretation is the death of a friendship ..read more