Keith B. Darrell's Blog, page 48

Civility Costs Nothing and Buys Everything

One of the things I miss most from my youth is civility. Civility is defined as politeness or the act of showing regard for others. People were nicer to each other when I was growing up. We never called our elders, including our neighbors, by their first names. As far as we knew, they didn't have first names. Every adult was either Mister, Mrs., or Miss. We, and our parents, did however know the names of our mailman, dry cleaner, pharmacist, newsboy and the store clerk. What's more, they knew...

Don't You Love A Happy Ending?

As a wonderful followup to my last two blog posts, I'd like to direct you to this video and article where you can watch Tomas receive the key to the city and be thanked by the man whose life he saved, a 19-year-old tourist from Estonia. The rescued man's father said, "Thank you for saving my son's life. You are now his brother. You are now also my son."

In answer to M.A.D.'s post, the article reveals the private firm "will not seek to renew its $1 million contract, which expires this year...

Swimming Against the Tide

I left out some information from yesterday’s post about Tomas Lopez, the heroic lifeguard fired for saving a drowning man’s life, so let me update the record.
Lifeguards Travis Madrid and Zoard Janko were fired after telling the corporation they would have done what Tomas did. "They sat me down and told me that my answer will determine if I get to keep my job or not," Madrid told reporters. "When I told him I would do the same thing that Tommy did, they told me I was dismissed. I don't want to...

Drowning In A Valueless Society

Last week, I wrote about an ordinary man who displayed old-fashioned American values of honesty and integrity by returning $13,000 he had found in a trash bin. Today, I’d like to tell you about another American hero, an ordinary man who demonstrated old-fashioned American values of courage and common sense, and how, in the modern corporate-dominated America, he paid for doing so with his job.
Tomas Lopez worked a lifeguard on Hallandale Beach, Florida. But he did not work for the city of Halla...

Independence Day: Patriotism vs. Plutocracy

On thisday commemorating the founding of our republic, it is appropriate to take a moment from our barbecues and fireworks displays and reflect on the state of our country and our society. Recently, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts backing political campaigns and spurred the development of superPACs, effectively ruled money equivalent to speech. But speech can take many forms, and depending on the nature of that sp...

Do The Right Thing

Several congressmen are being blackmailed into doing something wrong, something they don’t want to do, today. A powerful lobby has proven it has bought our Congress and owns our government. An innocent man is being pilloried, his reputation ruined, by shameful partisan thugs elected to Congress by voters who should have known better. And America has taken another step toward its decline as a beacon to the world for free and responsible government. 
The situation that occurred today is yet...

Top 10 Things I've Learned About You

Writing a blog can be a strange experience. We bloggers share our intimate thoughts with our keyboards and computer screens, sending our words into the electronic void, uncertain who, if anyone, will read them. My posts seldom elicit comments, so after a while, I lapse into a false sense of security, believing I'm typing to myself, until I'm shaken from my reverie whenever a reader posts a comment or approaches me in person and says they've read my blog. "So you're the one," I usually reply,...

Hop Ends Tonight at Midnight!

The Mid-Summer's Eve Giveaway Hop officially ends at midnight tonight. The winner, chosen at random, will be notified by e-mail within 48 hours. Please respond when notified so we can arrange to get you your prize. Check your e-mail! Good luck to all who entered!

Regular blog posts will resume tomorrow!

Mid-Summer's Eve Giveaway Hop

From June 20- 26, 2012, this blog will be participating in a blog hop. If you don't know what that is, I'll explain it in the fourth paragraph. The result is a lot of new visitors will be hopping by, so if you're one of them, I'd like to ask you to pause your hopping long enough to read this post to learn who I am and what this blog is about.

I'm a writer, of books and short stories, fiction and nonfiction, print and e-books. My print books are listed below (click here) and my e-Storybooks (s...

An Alarming Development

A beep from my home security alarm system awakened me. I had always known since the day I had installed the system this would happen one day. After all, that’s what I had been paying monthly monitoring fees for, for years. Yet, somehow I had expected something more – sirens, bells and whistles, confetti falling from the ceiling – than an emasculated beep.
The alarm panel read “C2 Trouble”. How informative; as if the alarm beeping had not been indicative of trouble. Since it looked like an erro...