As if climate change, its consuming heat and fires, and the killer pandemic plague were not enough, the country is getting closer to tyranny -- by the day.   Trump refuses peaceful transfer of power   President Trump keeps saying the only result of the November 3 elections he will accept is his own reelection. His refusal to endorse a peaceful transition of power, “the most fundamental  tenet  of American democracy,” has been shrouding the election in grave uncertainty and fear.   Barton Gellman , a journalist who has studied Trump and the forthcoming election, says:     “Trump’s strategy is never to concede. He may win, he may lose, but under no circumstances will he concede this election. That’s a big problem, because we don’t actually have a mechanism for forcing a candidate to concede, and concession is the way we have ended elections.”   Trump’s behavior is warning America of potential tyranny, starting November 4 th .   Supreme Cou...

My brother Panages (Pete) was eleven years older than me. By the time I was six, he left the village and our beautiful Greek island of Cephalonia for America. I knew he was my brother, but we did not have anything in common, not even memories of childhood. There were none. My older sisters used to tell me he was a trouble maker in high school. Once he drove a motorcycle into his class.   He left Greece on a merchant ship where he worked. Once in New York, he jumped ship and took the train to Chicago where my uncle George owned Sailors’ Drive-In, a small restaurant in Oaklawn, Illinois, a suburb right next to south Chicago.   In 1961, Pete sponsored me to come to the United States for college. It was at that point in my life, starting in 1961, that I realized I had a brother. He acted like a father, giving me a room in his apartment, paying me for working in the restaurant, teaching me how to drive a car, and helping me to enroll at the University of Illinois. In 1965, he drove...

  I have lived in Claremont, California for 12 years, and never have felt so much heat as I did Saturday, September 5, 2020. That was a very hot day. The temperature hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit.     Two days of intense heat   I usually read and write under the portico in my backyard. But that Saturday and next day, Sunday, September 6, 2020, I did not. The anthropogenic heat in the atmosphere plus the unchanging and life-supporting light and heat from the bright and immortal Sun formed a hot wave, aggressive and enveloping me like I was walking towards a huge fire oven: feeling warmth all over my body, with the temperature rising, and the brain telling me to seek shelter into the “air conditioned” home.   My thoughts immediately rushed to the incredible discomfort, nay death threat, my doves are facing. Two doves living in a corner of my portico are trying hatching another egg for another chick. I see them changing guard over the egg, staying motionless for hours...