Bilbo's Random Thought Collection

With all the terrible news and gut-wrenching changes in the country, it's easy - especially for us senior citizens who remember more civ...

My brother sends me a lot of e-mail, most of which is political and designed to get me spun up. He also sends a lot of funny stuff, most of...

Yes, I belong to AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons . This makes me an official, card-carrying Cantankerous* Old Fart, dadgu...

Junk mail, and it's electronic cousin, spam, are an unfortunate fact of life. The mailbox we wish was filled with chatty letters from f...

If you felt the earth shake yesterday, it was probably because of the announcement that Playboy  magazine ... beloved of generations of imp...

I recently received an e-mail from my friend Bob that offered some thoughts on how we define success at various ages. It's good enough t...

It's getting close to that time when Agnes and I will need to really retire and decide where we want to live out the remainder of our a...

Those of you who have been reading this blog for very long know that I retired from the Air Force after 23 years of flying a desk in suppor...

I remember once reading the observation that, although we complain that there's never enough time, we have all the time there is. That...

Dear Readers, Having carefully observed the condition of the nation and the world, and the day-to-day lives of my grandchildren, I have d...

Yesterday, Agnes and I celebrated our 30 th anniversary. We did this in two ways: during the day we tried to think of all the things we ne...

Stop the presses! The engagement of Hugh Hefner, 85 year-old head of the Playboy media empire, to 24 year-old Crystal Harris has been called...

Well, I never saw that hill coming, but it seems as if I may be over it. Yes, at the tender age of 59 years and seven months, I am considere...

People make lots of lists, especially around the beginning of the new year, when they are sometimes called resolutions . You know, resoluti...

Authors, philosophers, and comedians have made fortunes over the years by trying to describe life and define the stages of life through whic...

A birthday party for a three-year old child, attended by about 20 other children and their minders, is quite an adventure - lots of noise an...

I've been thinking a lot lately about getting older. Or, perhaps more positively, aging like a fine wine. Well, okay...just a wine. As...

Yesterday, my oldest son turned 36. My oldest grandaughter turned 10 (double-digits, gasp!) last month. And I have five - count 'em, f...

When I saw that title on a CNN article yesterday, I just had to read it. Admit it, so would you. If you want to go ahead and read it now,...

Yesterday, I turned 58 (and yes, Mike, I changed the age in the "about me" section of the blog AND on my Facebook page). There wa...