Today's Opinions

Gentle reader, not for the first time, we call your attention to the French expression “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”
This is usually translated as “The more things change, the more they are the same.”
This truism was brought to mind once again as we have been reading a book detailing the life of Henry Temple, Second Viscount Palmerston, 1739-1802.
He was the father of the Third Viscount Palmerston, 1784-1865, who was Queen Victoria’s Foreign Secretary for 15 years and twice her Prime Minister.

I’m celebrating an important one-year anniversary on Oct. 26. And in a way, many of you regular readers have been a part of it.
I’ve lost more than 140 pounds since my highest post-thyroid cancer weight, when steroids and other complications left me swollen, stiff-jointed and moon-faced.
I told you of my cancer then, almost three years ago, because it felt important for me to do so. Cancer is so often whispered about, but by openly talking about it, I felt I was confronting an enemy head on.

I recall a little rhyme my sister and I would exchange after our parents banished us from the living room at bedtime.
She taught it to me when we were Air Force brats sharing twin beds in the same room at various bases across the globe.
When we finally settled into a house Daddy built in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, we continued the nightly passage before saying our prayers from separate rooms.