Columns

 All of us begin thinking about the holidays with great expectations. On the side of the positives, we think of how great it will be to see family, gorge ourselves on all sorts of food that isn't good for us and how much the experience will bring us closer together. It is as if we set up the scenarios in our minds of humorous anecdotes to share, the exact schematic of how the family get-together will play out and it will end in classic movie fashion wrapped in a bow.

 Perhaps the best thing about writing a column is having a forum to work out what I believe.

 Joe Paterno, Jim Boeheim, and all the enablers who look away while children are molested are the big national story this Christmas. They and their failures to act, to protect, the most helpless of our citizens have been the talk of every town, every gathering where right-thinking people meet for the last month.  But in this season when we celebrate the coming of Christ, whom Christian theology teaches us was the son of the Almighty, we need a new perspective.

My apologies. I dusted off a column that was published a couple of years ago. It seems that every year about this time, I become involved in a quest for an item that no one really needs – but many really, really want. And that usually entails witnessing an irate shopper tearing apart an exhausted sales clerk. The following contains my thoughts on the subject: