Looks like all my internet woes regarding my website and blog have finally been resolved.
Whew.
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to clean up/re-work your website and slamming head first into all kinds of technical problems. Reminds me of…
In the above scenario, I wasn’t the one in the car. Or truck.
Anyway, I believe all is in the past now and things should function as they should from here on in.
Catching up on other things, the big news of the past few days was -what else for 2016?- the deaths of three very well known people and, at least for me, one that was known to my family.
First, Leonard Cohen passed away…
He was 82 years old and passed away after suffering a fall. In the elderly, something as simple as falling can lead to very bad things. RIP Mr. Cohen.
Florence Henderson, best known for playing the very chipper Carol Brady on the beloved Brady Bunch TV series, also passed away at the age of 82. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the show but like many people in and around my age, it was a fixture of television and provided some pleasant entertainment. And who can forget that opening?
The last of the big name passings is Fidel Castro.
Fidel Castro, more than anyone else in this world, is the reason yours truly exists. If Castro hadn’t overthrown Batista back in 1959 and taken over Cuba only to subsequently announce himself a Communist Dictator and take possession of all private industries and properties, my father would probably never have left his original home and studied abroad.
The country he was allowed to study in was another communist nation, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), and it was there he met and married my mother and I was born. Eventually they fled communism and made their way to Canada and from there Venezuela before settling in the United States.
That’s not to say I’m happy with Mr. Castro’s actions. There is no way to sugar coat it: He was a brutal dictator whose hands are stained with the blood of many and the suffering he caused the island nation of Cuba is inexcusable. Having said that, if there’s one bit of consolation it is that he was also a man of his time and I suspect someone like him will never come to exist ever again.
Just as well.
The fourth passing experienced in the last few days was a personal one. My brother-in-law’s brother suddenly passed away the day before Thanksgiving. I was not very close to him but I like my brother-in-law and it hurts to have someone so close to him pass.
2016 can’t end soon enough.