If you haven't noticed there is a new menu option at the top of the page - My Writings. This is a section where I will be putting my miscellaneous writings and ramblings, poems, essays, etc. Please leave comments on anything you read there.

Sometimes you find yourself on a path you didn't intend to take, but that doesn't mean it won't take you to a wonderful place.

Sometimes you find yourself on a path you did intend to take, but that doesn't mean it will take you to a wonderful place.

Sometime you might choose to take a different path, the path less taken, less popular, but that doesn't mean it won't take you someplace wonderful.

Sometime you will have to make a choice - the path to the left? The path to the right? Which should I choose? How do I decide? Do I go down the popular, well-trodden path? Or the path with many uncertainties?

Life is full of negativity, it is full of bad experiences, but what do you do when you confront adverse situations in your life?

I learned in that terrible year after the death of my wife what not to do.

I learned from the many deaths in my family that a person cannot live if he/she closes himself to everyone close to him.

That is what I did in that year that turned into a living hell. I hope you who are reading this will not do what I did if you find yourself in a life-changing situation. I hope you will read on and find out what I did to get on the path to healing.

After such a difficult time in life, we need to be open to other people. We need to talk to other people. We need to get the feelings out of our mind and out in the air.

Does life have different paths?

I decide to take a particular road and am then involved in an accident. Life would be different.

If I had left just 10 seconds later, would I have missed that accident? Life would be different.

If I had taken a different road, would I have missed that accident? Life would be different.

You decide to go out for dessert; you sit at one particular table facing a particular direction, would we have met? Life would be different.

Another day, another mass shooting. 2019.

• Dayton, Ohio - 9 dead, 27 injured
• El Paso, Texas - 22 dead, 26 injured
• Gilroy, California - 3 dead, 15 injured
• Brooklyn, New York - 1 dead, 11 injured
• Virginia Beach, Virginia - 12 killed, 4 injured

Mass shootings and shootings total 253 so far this year. That's more shootings than days.

First, in the map are many dots, each one represents a mass shooting. The map was put together by the Gun Violence Archive (www.shootingtracker.com). They consider a mass shooting as being 4 or more people shot and/or killed in one location and at one time. For reference, the FBI considers 3 or more to be a mass shooting.

Just this past week we have seen 4 mass shootings in my home country. What is wrong with that place? I'm struggling with what to make of it. My mind is boggled by what I see on the news. Never in my life has life in the US been so thrown out of sync, so far from the norm, upside-down. What's even more mind-boggling is how so many people continue to support the man who espouses hatred and racism, the man who encourages violence against other people simply because he himself doesn't like the color of their skin - who is that man? The Fool on the Hill, the President of the US.