Ralph Reiland

My first recommendation is very basic. Don’t cut. As Woody Allen stated, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up.” And it’s best to show up on time. Remember the old Tibetan proverb: “Man who comes to work early and…

It took only a few seconds the other day to see how candidate Obama got the idea that we have a propensity in Pennsylvania to “cling to guns and religion.” I was in the lobby of the Jefferson Regional Medical…

By Ralph R. Reiland Remember those stories about Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned? Actually, if he was really playing, it was probably a lyre, a small harp-like stringed instrument. Fiddles weren’t around yet. Well, showing how little the…

I don’t write a self-help column, or about household hints, but here’s a warning about how I flew out the bathtub a few days ago. It started with eczema, some dry and itchy skin on three fingers. The doctor prescribed…

As I’m writing this, they’re in a panic in Congress, voting in the wee hours, bribing reluctant senators with millions in slush funds for their respective states, all to ram through a health reform bill that few if any of…

This is a tough time of year for eco-friendly global planners. In Copenhagen they tried to put together a deal to save the world’s forests while we rode around with millions of Christmas trees tied to our car roofs. Among…

Our dreadful destiny was that we were either going to starve to death or be buried by advancing glaciers in a new Ice Age. The alleged villain was global cooling, coming faster than anyone had predicted. It wouldn’t be all…

There’s a new picture of Obama that’s sticking in my mind, like a song that keeps playing in your head (the one that keeps playing for me this week is “Empire State of Mind,” especially the lines by Alicia Keys). …