March 24, 2024

We have all had personal seminal moments. Seminal moments are things such as books, works, events and experiences that have had a great influence on one’s life. It could have been the day you graduated from high school or college; the day you got married or had your first child; the day you had your first hole-in-one. These are moments that you will never forget. You can recall vividly almost everything that happened during those events. Everything else may be a blur, but those events stand out in sharp relief.

Seminal moments happen in the public sphere as well. Unfortunately, they seem to be happening less and less because of the balkanization of information. Our experiences are become unique because we separate sources of information and news feeds. Seminal moments in our country’s history are the moments that we came together. These are moments that we can remember where we were, what we were doing, and who we were with.

On a beautiful Friday afternoon on November 22, 1963, I was attending a football rally at Malden Catholic for our big game against Catholic Memorial. We were gathered in the courtyard when the festivities were interrupted by an announcement. President Kennedy had been shot. Anyone who was alive at that time can tell you everything about that day, and the days that followed. Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Walter Cronkite, the school depository, the puff of smoke, and more. We came together as a nation in our collective horror and mourning.

For many months in 1963, adolescents around the world were playing the music created by four young men from Liverpool, The Beatles. On February 9, 1964, they made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Ed Sullivan Show was already the TV show that every American watched on Sunday nights where we saw and heard everyone from Maria Callas to Topo Gigio. On that Sunday night, almost all Americans huddled around their black and white TV sets to watch what would become a cultural phenomenon.

In the 60’s, the United States was in a space race with the Soviet Union. They launched Sputnik, and it was off to the races. President Kennedy made landing a man on the moon a national priority. In the summer of 1969, on July 20th at 8:17PM to be exact, the world watched as Commander Neil Armstrong descended the ladder from the Apollo 11 lunar module, stepped foot on the moon, and said, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It is a day seared in the memories of anyone who witnessed this great achievement, and it brought a country together that was dealing with assassinations, the Viet Nam War, and civil unrest.

August 16-18, 1969, was billed as three days of peace and music in upstate New York. It was Woodstock. All the best rock groups of that era would be there. The promoters were totally unprepared for the onslaught of over 400,000 people, and the New York Throughway was closed. It was a different kind of seminal moment in that if you can remember being there, you probably weren’t. I was there with my girlfriend, and we still have the tickets to prove it.

On October 19, 1987, I was working for Shearson Lehman Brothers on the 101st floor of Two World Trade Center. It was a Monday. The stock market dropped 22% that day creating worldwide losses of $1.71 trillion. It was totally unexpected, and was only dwarfed by the Great Recession of 2008. There were many reasons for the crash including portfolio insurance hedging, but those of us in the business and anyone with a stake in the markets will remember the feeling of helplessness as the markets went into free fall.

If you are a Red Sox fan, with deference to Carlton Fisk, there are two dates etched in your memory, October 2, 1978, and October 27, 2004. In 1978, I was in a friend’s apartment with a bunch of guys who were taking a break from work to watch the Red Sox-Yankees, play-off game. All I can say is Bucky “Freakin’ Dent. On October 27, 2004, the curse of the Bambino was lifted forever as the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in the World Series.

On September 11, 2001, I was in my office in Winter Park, FL going through my daily routine with the TV on in the background. Everyone was soon glued to what was happening and what would become the deadliest attack in U.S. history. The United States and the world would never be the same again.

On a day in March of 2020, we were on the first week of a month long trip to Florida when all hell broke loose. Wherever you were, you had a similar experience. COVID was officially out in the open. Plans were canceled. Everyone headed home to shelter in place.

Seminal moments, whether joyful or tragic, can bring us together as a country. We need more seminal moments like the moon landing and The Beatles, and fewer of the likes of 9/11 and COVID. Seminal moments are hard to predict, but they are predictable in that there will be more of them.

February 23, 2024

Harvard is certainly on a losing streak. If it were a gambler at the MGM casino, it would be tapped out. Fortunately, Harvard has over $50 billion in chips so it won’t be leaving the table any time soon. Harvard, along with the University of North Carolina, lost its affirmative action case at the Supreme Court. This was a case that affected all institutions of higher learning. President Claudine Gay was forced to resign presumably after accusations of plagiarism, but it was probably more for answering a politically-motivated question with a weak, academic and legalistic response. She apparently thought she was debating the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The President of the University of Pennsylvania lost her job as well. Sadly, the question was posed by Elise Stefanik ‘06, who obviously failed or never took ethics and moral reasoning at Harvard. More recently, Harvard administrators have had to deal with faculty and students posting anti-Semitic comments.

Former Harvard President Derek Bok wrote an extensive piece for the alumni recently titled “Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard.” It details Harvard’s missteps, the political environment it finds itself in, the internal forces at play, and some of the issues it needs to address, and how to address them. Harvard, as do many universities, needs to deal with issues of elitism, alumni privilege and legacy, free speech and academic freedom. It is accused of having a liberal bias. It needs to responsibly invest and administer its $50 billion endowment while continuing its capital campaign and supporting financially-strapped students.

Harvard isn’t perfect. It never was, and never will be.  It has always been a lightning rod for major issues. It was at the forefront of the anti-war movement in the 60’s along with Columbia, Cornell and Kent State. It ushered in affirmative action in 1969 at about the same time it offered both men and women the same educational experience. It has had to deal with the push to eliminate energy-related companies from its investment portfolios. As with most institutions, it is an ongoing work in progress. Criticism is healthy as is self-reflection.  What really bothers me, however, are the motives of some of the people that wage these attacks. I do not for one minute believe that all of these critics are well-meaning people.  Many of these people have worked assiduously to tear down almost every institution in America.  They have worked to discredit the media, the judiciary, the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA, the military, law enforcement, the electoral process, school administrations, libraries, the scientific community, and the NIH and CDC. These people don’t want a democracy. They are hell bent on establishing a theocracy, the latest manifestation of which is the ruling in Alabama by a Q-Anon friendly judge that the destruction of embryos is tantamount to murder. They don’t want to fix Harvard. They want to destroy it and all institutions like it, and replace them with the likes of Liberty College, which gave us the Jerry Falwell sex scandal, Bob Jones University, and Hillsdale College.  Their agenda is not to provide an education that is “fair and balanced.” Their agenda is to replace a liberal education with a religious-based, conservative dogma. Harvard is a liberal university. Being surprised that Harvard is liberal is like being surprised that there was gambling at Rick’s Cafe. Harvard cannot be any more liberal today than it was in the 60’s. It is certainly more diverse. It is better balanced today between men and women; between whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians; between domestic and international students; and between students from different socio-economic backgrounds. I don’t think that Harvard has become more liberal as much as the rest of the country has gotten more conservative. Over the years, we have seen rollbacks of women’s rights, voting rights, and environmental rights. We have seen the rise of Christian Nationalism, and white supremacy.

Harvard should continue to evaluate itself in a thoughtful, sober and deliberative way, keeping in mind that it’s mission is to provide a liberal education, which welcomes all points of view. It should not make changes staring down the twin barrels of a shotgun being aimed at it by MAGA theocrats looking to impose their religious beliefs. I prefer the open source, liberal education that universities like Harvard provide with all of its flaws and imperfections. Liberal institutions like Harvard and its leaders must pass the test.

Paul Chiampa ‘71

February 20, 2024

If you know who Eugene T. Maleska is, give yourself a pat on the back for being an aging puzzler. Eugene Thomas Maleska was an American crossword puzzle constructor and editor. He edited The New York Times Crossword Puzzle from 1977 to 1993. He was to crossword puzzles what Ukrainian Charles Goren was to bridge. If for no other reason, we should fund Ukraine as a thank you for what Goren provided to our American culture. Maleska, who earned a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard, was succeeded by Will Shortz. Shortz has a degree from Indiana University in the invented field of enigmatolgy, and continues as the puzzle editor to this day.

I was struck recently by an article talking about how a professional sports team used the solving of various New York Times puzzles as a bonding experience. One of the players acts as the commissioner as he oversees the solving of the Mini Crossword, Wordle, and Connections, which are among the seven puzzles the Times offers in its Puzzle Pack. It is difficult to go to any social gatherings these days, and not overhear people talking about the day’s puzzles. I overheard one person bragging at Treehouse Brewery one day about how he had solved Wordle in one attempt twice.

The queen of all of the games is the New York Times Crossword. The New York Times initially regarded crosswords as frivolous, calling them “a primitive form of mental exercise.” The first puzzle ran on Sunday, February 15, 1942. The motivating impulse for the paper to run its first puzzle over the objections of its publisher appears to have been the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The thinking was that the American people needed something to occupy themselves during blackouts.

One of the most prolific crossword constructors off all time was Jules Arensberg, whose daughter, Lyn Silverstein, lives in East Longmeadow. Arensberg never graduated from college and worked at the post office. However, at a time before the internet and without readily available resource material, he constructed crossword puzzles for the New York Times for over thirty years. One of his Sunday puzzles was recognized by the newspaper in its 50th anniversary issue dedicated to the crossword puzzle. “He was among the first to employ compound words, phrases, and imaginative definitions designed to lift puzzle solving from its humdrum literalness that stressed memory instead of brainwork.”

I started doing the daily crossword puzzle in the 70’s as I commuted home every evening on Metro North. It was a great way to unwind. Serious puzzlers solved the puzzle in pen. Pencils and erasers were for amateurs. The puzzles get more difficult every day with Monday being the easiest, and Saturday being the hardest. Sunday is just a larger version of a Thursday puzzle. On Sundays, my very young daughter would crawl into my lap as I was doing the puzzle, and then scribble all over it, shrieking with laughter. She is now a regular solver. One of the great puzzles of all time was constructed in 1996. It came out on the day of the Presidential election. The clue essentially asked, “Who won the election?” The puzzle could have been solved by answering either “Clinton” or “Bob Dole.” This puzzle was noted in the Will Shortz 2006 documentary about competitive puzzle solving titled, “Wordplay.”

Solving the New York Times crossword puzzle has become a magnificent obsession for me. It justifies the five years of Latin that I took in junior and senior high school. Much to my chagrin, solving crossword puzzles is not going to stave off Alzheimer’s according to Lisa Genova in her book, “Remember.” According to her, “There is no compelling evidence that doing puzzles or brain-training exercises does anything to decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s. You’ll improve at doing crosswords, but you’re not building a bigger, Alzheimer’s-resistant brain. You don’t want to simply retrieve information you’ve already learned because this type of “mental exercise is like traveling down old, familiar streets, cruising neighborhoods you already know.” Bah, humbug.

On the other hand, puzzles are great for dealing with insomnia. People of my vintage often suffer from not being able to sleep soundly through the night. There are many reasons, which I don’t need to go into here. Sleep-challenged puzzlers know that the next day’s crossword puzzle becomes available online at 10:00PM (6:00PM on Saturday’s and Sunday’s). It’s a great way to exhaust the brain so you can go back to sleep. After all, how else would you know that “Isere,” besides being a “river in France” and a “department in France,” is also the name of the ship that brought the Statue of Liberty to the United States.

Paul Chiampa

February 15, 2024

The New York Times had a recent article about how to apologize correctly. Often we try to apologize, but we only make matters worse because apologizing involves vulnerability. Some of you may not get the New York Times for reasons I cannot fathom so I cannot send the article to you. Let me summarize the article with an all too familiar example.

1. Express Regret. Don’t say to your partner “I want to apologize for losing the match.” Just apologize. Say “I lost the match.”

2. Explain, keep it brief, and don’t make excuses. Don’t say “I missed the putt because you gave me a bad read.” Just say, “I missed the putt.”

3. Acknowledge any harm you’ve caused. Say “Because of me, we lost the hole, we lost the match, and we lost all semblance of self-respect.”

4. Say you’ll try not to do it again. Say “Next time, I will read my own damn putt.”

5. Offer to repair. Say “If the measly $5 means that much to you, I’ll take care of it.”

6. Ask for forgiveness. Say “I hope you will forgive me, and I hope you will find another partner?”

And they say there are no sorries in golf.

February 8th, 2024

On a lighter note, I recently completed my 3500th online New York Times crossword puzzle as well as finishing my 1,200th consecutive puzzle. You might call it a magnificent obsession.

February 8, 2024

They say that it is impolite to discuss politics and religion so you may want to stop reading right now because I am about to discuss both. I was raised Catholic, and, for many years, I was very good at it. I totally aced the Baltimore Catechism, and made my First Communion. The best part of the ceremony was that I got to keep my white bucks, which were very cool a la Pat Boone. I moved on to my Confirmation where I took the name James for some unknown reason. I went to church every Sunday, and every Holy Day of Obligation. I dutifully said prayers at the Stations of the Cross.

Every Sunday, our Jesuit priest would spew fire and brimstone from the pulpit. Apparently, I was going to hell despite my best efforts to be a good Catholic. I confessed my sins regularly because I was scared not to. Based on my wayward ways, I regularly received a penance of ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Mary’s, which I rattled off in record time.

For my freshman year of high school, I went to a Catholic high school. I was already questioning much of the church’s dogma by that time, but one year of a Catholic education sent me over to the dark side. It had nothing to do with pedophile priests. It had more to do with having to spend way too much time in chapel, and not enough time in the classroom. When I transferred back to public school, I was a year behind.

I could go on, but, with all of this, I was never subjected to bald-faced politics. Even with all of their faults, the fathers, the brothers, and the nuns never used their positions of influence o proselytize for one political party, or one candidate. They didn’t abuse their offices to run voter registration campaigns just for one party; they didn’t rail against members of the LGBTQ community. They didn’t vilify immigrants. They didn’t ostracize parishioners, who voted for the wrong candidate. They didn’t believe that a particular presidential candidate was the next coming of Jesus. And they didn’t use the pulpit to sell books, unless it was the Bible, and promote websites. They limited themselves to the Kingdom of Heaven, and were not concerned about the kingdom of Mar-a-Lago.

Things have changed. Tim Alberta lays out the case in a terrific book titled “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory.” The born again, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Moral Majority, Christian National coalition has morphed into a movement unrecognizable as religion. It is unabashedly political. If preachers don’t talk about the Second Amendment, or trans kids, or traffic in conspiracy theories, their congregants will move down the street where they are apt to find an unscrupulous pastor, who is more than willing to pander to their worst instincts. They are taught that Democrats are doing the devil’s work. Joe Biden is the devil incarnate. Evangelicals worship America more than God. When did God come across the border, and become an American citizen?

At a Faith and Freedom conference, Tim Alberta “looked on as thousands of believers were told that their children were being groomed; that their communities were under invasion; that their guns were going to be confiscated; that their medical treatments were suspect; that their newspapers were lying to them; that their elected officials were diabolical; that their government and country were coming after them; that their faith was being banned from public life; that their leader was being unjustly persecuted on their behalf.”

The Evangelical movement is littered with grifters and scallawags. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were involved in a sex scandal, and Jim Bakker was convicted of bilking the true believers out of $158 million. Jerry Falwell, Jr. was dismissed from Liberty University for his own sexual misconduct involving his wife and a pool boy. They were not exactly doing the Lord’s work. This movement is a money-making, political movement cloaked in the faintest patina of religiosity. Unfortunately, we don’t have to time to wait for the real Second Coming.

Paul Chiampa

January 29, 2024

People like myself are constantly pulling out what little hair we have left every time Donald Trump and his sickophants do or say something utterly pathological. We cannot wrap our heads around the fact that human beings, who walk on two feet, can actually believe the things they say they believe, or can excuse the behavior they excuse from the former President. Trump’s list of dastardly deeds would take up an entire issue of this newspaper, but even his most recent stuff is alarmingly disqualifying. Yet his comments and actions get virtually no blowback from his MAGA base-ment dwellers. Why?

He owes E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million dollars for rape and defamation, but he gets a collective “meh” from his people. He wants the stock market to crash and the economy to go into free fall because he thinks it will help his electoral chances. He, as well as Republican Congressmean Elise Stefanik, refer to the January 6th insurrectionists as hostages. He faces a MEGA, multi-million monetary fine in New York for fraud, and he still has three criminal trials to deal with , one for the January 6th attack on the Capitol, one for the stolen classified documents case, and the third for his election interference in Georgia. The cherry on the cake is he is now preventing Republicans in Congress from reaching a deal with Democrats on border security because he doesn’t want to give President Biden a victory, according to Republican Senators. He continues to brag about overturning Roe vs. Wade as the Christian Coalition kisses his ring. And none of this registers with his voters as witnessed recently in Iowa, New Hampshire, and probably South Carolina.

The two things that bind Trump’s followers to Trump are fear and racism. As long as Trump can appeal to the raw emotion of fear, and tie it to the historical theme of racism in America, he can do just about anything, including crucifying someone in the middle of the Easter Parade. This isn’t to say that all of Trump’s supporters are racists, but supporting a racist candidate keeps one’s own hands clean.

Racism is alive and well in America. It started in 1619 when slaves were first brought to America from Africa. Racism was codified in the U.S Constitution when it was determined that only three out every five slaves were to be counted in the population. The Dred Scott decision was decided by the Supreme Court in 1857. Almost 620,000 people died in the Civil War, which was about slavery. Sorry Nikki Haley. The Jim Crow laws were introduced in the late 19th century in the South to enforce racial segregation. Black soldiers fought in WW II in segregated units only to face more segregation at home. George Wallace stood on the steps of the University of Alabama in 1963. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, but the Supreme Court gutted it in 2013. Black marchers were beaten on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma in 1965. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963; Malcolm X in 1965; Martin Luther King in 1968; Robert Kennedy in 1968. Rodney King was beaten in 1991, which led to the LA riots. Court-ordered busing created a crisis in Boston in 1974. More recently, a rash of killings of black people by police officers and armed citizens spawned the Black Lives Matter movement. The Supreme Court overturned Affirmative Action as a tool for college admissions. The teaching of Critical Race Theory has been vilified. AP Black History has been attacked in many educational jurisdictions. DEI is in retreat at the corporate level.

Trump has been found guilty of discriminating against black families in real estate. He has attacked Mexicans as rapists. He questioned President Obama’s birth certificate, and is now doing the same with Nikki Haley. He tried to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. He attacked a Gold Star family from Pakistan. He threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans. He separated Hispanic families at the border. He wanted black members of Congress to go back to where they came from. He referred to certain countries as shit hole countries. He believes that there are good people amongst the white supremacists, who marched with Nazi flags in Charlottesville, and brought Confederate flags into the Capitol. He blamed BLM for the insurrection.

Causing people to be afraid of “the other” is what racists do to gain control and authoritarian power, and it is what Trump is doing. He doesn’t want to build a wall. He wants you to be afraid of what is on the other side of the wall. Hitler made the German people afraid of Jews. Hitler learned how to deal with the Jewish problem from the U.S. legal system, which had twisted itself into knots in order to discriminate against minorities. Rachel Maddow lays it out in her new book, “Prequel.” Trump is tapping into a long history of American racism to sow fear amongst the US population, and, to a certain extent, it is working.

Paul Chiampa

January 3, 2024

2023 is in the rear view mirror, and 2024 is in our face. We are facing a brutal presidential election year. The media will be gorging on and be subsumed by every facet of the coming election. Every day, we will be inundated with reports on debates, primaries, federal trials, state trials, civil charges, election tampering, slates of electors, rallies, conventions, who’s up, who’s down, control of Congress, decisions by the Supreme Court ad nauseam. Unfortunately, what we may not be hearing too much about are concrete platforms to keep the country moving forward. The Republicans have a lack of imagination, not having had an agenda or party platform in recent memory. This last-controlled Congress set a record for non-productivity. The Democrats suffer from a lack of coherent messaging. In the movie “The Graduate,” Benjamin learned that the secret of life involved one thing, plastics. For the Democrats, I would suggest that the campaign for 2024 should be about one thing also, work.

2023 is in the rear view mirror, and 2024 is in our face. We are facing is a brutal presidential election year. The media will be gorging on and be subsumed by every facet of the coming election. Every day, we will be inundated with reports on debates, primaries, federal trials, state trials, civil charges, election tampering, slates of electors, rallies, conventions, who’s up, who’s down, control of Congress, decisions by the Supreme Court ad nauseum. Unfortunately, what we may not be hearing too much about are concrete platforms to keep the country moving forward. The Republicans have a lack of imagination, not having had an agenda or party platform in recent memory. This last-controlled Congress set a record for non-productivity. The Democrats suffer from a lack of coherent messaging. In the movie “The Graduate,” Benjamin learned that the secret of life involved one thing, plastics. For the Democrats, I would suggest that the campaign for 2024 should be about one thing also, work.

Democrats have always been portrayed as the party that eschews work, and embraces freeloaders and welfare queens. Their voters are looking for a handout rather than hand up. It’s as if every Democrat was Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik friend in the old comedy, “The Dobie Gillis Show.” Every time someone mentioned the word “work” to Maynard, he would go into a spasm. I think Democrats should make the word “Work” the cornerstone of everything they talk about.

Immigration, illegal and otherwise, is not about rapists, murderers, and drug dealers. Immigration is about work. People flocking to this country are fleeing poverty, authoritarianism, and conditions brought on by climate change. They want to work, and will work. All you have to do is look out your window to see that this is true. They work hard, and send money home when they can. We should celebrate their work ethic, and not vilify it.

Unions are about work and workers. Workers who went out on strike were looking for a fair shake after the COVID economy passed them by, and the top 1% received tax breaks courtesy of Donald Trump, who famously bragged to Mar-a-Lago members about how he made them richer. Democrats should continue to honor and support the real workers.

Democrats are largely responsible for pushing through increases in the minimum wage around the country. The minimum wage is not welfare. It goes to people who work, and who probably still can’t make ends meet. Rather than forcing companies to pay a real, livable wage, which the minimum wage is not, it falls upon the rest us to provide adequate shelter, food, and health services for the working poor. “Working” and “poor” are two words that should never be in the same sentence.

Why do women need maternal healthcare and abortions? Primarily, women seek abortions because they are already having trouble coping with raising a family, and working a full-time job. They need to work, and having another mouth to feed without adequate daycare jeopardizes the entire family. Women want to and need to work. Democrats need to make that a central part of their message. Fortunately, a women’s right to vote hasn’t been taken away…yet.

Climate change is the number one issue facing young people today. I used to say that I could outlive my mistakes. I don’t say that anymore. However, the salient question is can young people outlive our mistakes? At the rate we are going, maybe not. Young people today deserve to be able to go to work in a healthy environment where they don’t have to worry about extreme heat, natural disasters, diasporas, a choking atmosphere, rising sea levels, and more. They want to work where they can be safe and productive.

Infrastructure is not about roads, and bridges, and tunnels, and airports. It’s about getting people to work. Every large and small city in America has a traffic problem, which eats up productive work time. Bridges are bottlenecks, trains chug along, and planes are delayed, causing everyone to lose precious hours. If we could travel more efficiently, we would be able to work more productively.

Lastly, healthcare and affordable healthcare are all about work. People want to be able to get up in the morning, and go to work. They also want to be able to go to work without the mental anguish of worrying about what might happen to them and their families if they get sick. We need a healthy work because I can’t do it.

While Republicans are fiddling in hopes of burning down the house, Democrats should be pounding on the theme of “Work.” It’s not about immigration, the minimum wage, unions, abortion, day care, climate change, infrastructure or healthcare. It’s not even about Donald Trump. It’s about work.

Paul Chiampa

December 30, 2023

Well, here we are again. We are about to turn the page on a year gone by. Every publication, news show, and podcast under the sun is replete with year-end retrospectives of the best and worst moments in sports, politics, cinema, the arts, social media, natural disasters, unnatural disasters, books, quotes, lives well-lived and so on. It’s also the time of year when we start thinking about our New Year’s resolutions. If you are fortunate and didn’t accomplish any of this year’s resolutions, you get to roll them over into 2024. If you happened to knock off one or two, now you have a problem because you have to think of something new.

I lead a spin class once or twice a week at Best Fitness in Springfield, which is a whole, other story. This time of year, I try to coach my fellow spinners in setting objectives, which is a habit I developed when I was managing real people in a real job. Setting goals effectively is an entire industry in the management consulting business. There are a variety of different approaches, but there are more similarities than differences. Here are some of the techniques that are common to most programs.

• Be Specific: Saying that you want to exercise more is not a goal; it’s an aspiration. If you want to exercise more, how much more? How many times a week are you going to do it?

• Be Focused: You don’t need to have multiple resolutions. Research shows that very few people ever achieve their resolutions. Pick one, and focus on it. If you are killing it, add a second. Completing one resolution is a major achievement. Habits do not die quickly, especially bad habits.

• Be Realistic: You don’t have to set climbing Mt. Everest as your goal. Pick something that is attainable. If you are working out once a week, ramp up to twice a week, then three times a week. Setting unreasonable expectations is a resolution killer.

• Be Creative: Mix it up, keep it fresh. It’s easy to get bored with the same routine every time. If you are a walker, try different locales…your neighborhood, the high school track, the bike path, the park.

• Be Disciplined: Write it down; put in your day planner or your iPhone. If it isn’t written, it doesn’t exist. Treat it like any other appointment. If you have to cancel, you must reschedule. Remove any obstacles to getting it done.

• Be Accountable: Tell a friend, a colleague, a relative. Put yourself on notice. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing.

• Be Competitive: Challenge yourself, keep pushing the envelope. Or challenge someone else. Make a game of it.

• Be Good to Yourself: Milestones don’t need to be millstones. Treat yourself along the way.

Like everyone else, I have some of my own New Year’s resolutions. Here are some of them.

I am not going to fact check Donald Trump or any of his ilk anymore. I am going to assume that they are lying, which is a good assumption based on past actions. The burden of proof is on them to prove they are not lying. Why should I do all the work?

I am not going to watch anymore golf in 2024 on TV except for the four majors…The Masters, US Open, the PGA, and The Open. I may make an exception for The Players. I just finished reading Alan Shipnuck’s book, “LIV Free or Die.” It’s about the epic and unresolved struggles between the PGA Tour, LIV golf and the Saudi PIF. It’s worse than I thought, and has gotten worse with the defection of John Rahm . I don’t need to watch two, mediocre golf tournaments, especially when one benefits Donald Trump.

I am not going to write any more articles about Donald Trump. Hopefully, it won’t be necessary because there really isn’t much more than can be said that will make a difference, and that he will lose the 2024 election. However, I made the same resolution in 2020, and that was one resolution I definitely did not keep.

Happy New Year!

Paul Chiampa

December 29, 2023

Former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, recently shanked a three foot putt when asked a very simple question. Much like the presidents of three leading universities, who struggled to answer a question if students advocating for the genocide of Jews were protected by the schools’ code of conduct, she couldn’t answer a simple question about what the Civil War was about. The question was not asked by a politician trying to create a viral moment, but was asked by a New Hampshire voter, who just wanted to know. It wasn’t a “gotcha” question. It wasn’t even a question you would find on a high school history exam because it was too easy. She dissembled and bloviated about personal freedom and government interference, but the word “slavery” never made it past her lips. She eventually said, “What do you want me to say about slavery?” The questioner responded, “You have answered my question.” She has tried to clean up the damage, but the damage has been done. Sometimes gaffes are more than just gaffes. Sometimes they give us a glimpse into the real person.

Many independents and moderates on both sides have said that they could live with Nikki Haley. At least, they say, she isn’t Donald Trump. I personally don’t like many of her positions, but I have convinced myself that she probably doesn’t believe half of the stuff she is forced to say in order to placate the MAGA’s. My thinking is that she would become more presidential once in office even though I have heard that argument before, and how did that work out? However, after Haley’s latest faux pas, I am not sure anymore that she is the one. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy are definitely not the ones. I like Chris Christie, but we have to be realistic, don’t we? Which leaves Donald Trump.

“What do you want me to say about Donald Trump?” Of course the devolution of the Republican Party is about Donald Trump. It’s about a lot of other stuff as well, but that’s the gist of it, and Abraham Lincoln is not walking through the door. “What do you want me to say?” is now the mantra of the GOP. Whenever a politician or a voter is asked about any of Donald Trump’s impeachments, legal cases, felony charges and authoritarian tendencies, the response is essentially “What do you want me to say about Donald Trump?” Do you want me to say that I know that he is criminally liable of instigating and fomenting an insurrection; that he is horribly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief because of his penchants for denigrating the military, and stealing and sharing classified information; that he has been convicted of rape; that he has been found guilty of multiple instances of defrauding consumers, companies and charities; that his authoritarian words and actions pose a serious threat to our democracy; and that I won’t support him. Never.”

When you ask MAGA Republicans what they think about global warming, their response is “What do you want me to say about climate change? That humans are warming the planet; that glaciers are melting; that seas are rising; that weather is getting more severe; that temperatures are at all time highs; that Washington is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry; that air is getting dirtier; that water is getting scarcer; and that health is being eroded. Never.”

When you ask MAGA Republicans about why we have so many mass murders in the United States, their response is “What do you want me to say about guns?” That we are awash in guns accounting for 80% of guns in circulation worldwide; that our mental health is no worse than anywhere else; that Congress in the pocket of the NRA and the gun manufacturers; that we don’t demand background checks for all; that we allow teenagers to buy AR-15’s. Never”

When you ask MAGA Republicans about what they think about taking away a woman’s right to control her own body, they say “What do you want me to say about abortion? Do you want me to say that women are dying; do you want me to say that this is the government taking away individual freedom; that the courts are taking away a right to privacy; that Congress is in the pocket of the Christian Coalition; and that these are restrictions being put in place by old, white men. Never”

I am appalled by all of the things that MAGA Republicans are unable to say. “What do you want me to say?”

Paul Chiampa