My blogosphere days

My first post on Blogger was not in 1997, which is what you might think if you look at the dates in my Blog Archive. 

However, the posts you see listed from 1997 through 1999 were from the period right after I was laid off by The Arizona Republic in one of that newspaper's first downsizings. 

I was anxious to get back to working on my occupational passion, which was writing about popular music: rock, jazz, blues, world music and other forms. 

I decided that I needed to work freelance because, for a variety of reasons, I didn't want to move my family from town to town looking for opportunities in the news business.

Unpleasant random thoughts

Every now and then, I think about the geopolitical situations that face us, and I draw some conclusions that aren't necessarily commonplace

1. World War I never ended, but if you think it did end, then you can label the current conflicts in the world as World War III. 

2. If the Union had let the Confederacy secede, the Confederacy would have failed a few years afterwards and we'd be free of the stupid North vs. South conflict in the U.S. (i.e., "the South shall rise again" and all of its surrounding iconography) that fuels so much of the rancor in today's political scene. 

3. Jobs shipped overseas from the United States have less to do with trade imbalances that can be remedied by tariffs and more to do with the blind pursuit of profit over any social good. 

I guess each one of these could use a little explanation about why I come to these conclusions: