Last week, I called on the student newspaper at Florida Atlantic University to retract a botched story about HIV. While they didn’t remove the story, they did apologize to their readers for spreading “medical misinformation” – among other things.

When I was a young man, it didn’t occur to me to be grateful for my life. Maybe it was because I imagined everyone else had the same life as mine, and my focus was on succeeding, but I’m not sure at what. As a gay elder, my days start and end with gratitude, not forced or feigned, nor because I believe that if I don’t say “Thank you” now that I’ll pay for it in the next life.

The foundational pin holding the American rule of law together is that no man is above it.

Since reading “Great Expectations” by Dickens, the character Miss Havisham has represented a person who can’t let go of the past, nor the grievances they engender. She’d been left at the altar by a devious fraud that forever haunted her feelings on love. She left everything as it was on the day of her nuptial, including her wedding cake. Spiders and mice eventually ruled her home.