Mark Knows It All

If you are looking for warm and fuzzy…you ain’t gonna find it here. Keep–a-goin’. This is about a phenomenon that is becoming less and less unusual…longevity. I don’t have any statistics, but anecdotally it appears to me that folks are living longer and longer. And that is causing some real problem on all sorts of different levels be it Social Security, Medicaid, long term care. The list goes on and on. My wife and I have had that kind of longevity in both of our families. My mother died three years ago this January at the age of 89. I have an uncle and aunt who are pushing 100. My wife’s mother lived to be 84 and died this past September. The usual response is “isn’t that wonderful he/she/they led such a long life!” Well…maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. If the family is functional long life is a good thing. If it is dysfunctional, that is another story. Both of our mothers were difficult people, and I mean that in the worst possible way. While on the surface things seemed al...

I have been writing Mark Knows It All for eight years making this my eighth Christmas Card.   Each year I begin to look for things that could be the topic of my year's favorite essay.   Over the years I have found Christmas in a mad dash for cookies, or in a little girl who was physically challenged going down the steps after a Christmas show, or on a drive to Sharon midst a spectacular full moon and beautiful decorations.    This has been a difficult year.    It has been filled with friends and family passing expectedly or unexpectedly.   There has been family turmoil rising up when we weren't paying attention.    People have been on edge.   Everybody seems to be angry.   Then there was that shooting thing in Connecticut just days before Christmas taking the lives of 28 people, twenty of whom were innocents.   As horrific as the Newtown massacre was, it pales in comparison to the violence on the streets of Chicago a...

Okay….all of you do-gooders who want to wash yourselves in the Christmas spirit are going to have to wait until next week. This week, I am the Grinch…the Scrooge….the curmudgeon who is ready to take this holiday and shove it up someone’s ho ho ho. Generally I am a good natured person (Alright…who snickered?). But this year I have had it up to my chinny chin chin with people who always have their hand out. How much is enough? The begging for the “needy” is non-stop. From food banks to the local charities to collections in churches to collections in grocery stores to the cashier who asks do you want to donate a dollar to help blankity blank to my Continuing Legal Education seminars where the Ohio Supreme Court says we need to do more pro-bono work. Hell, half the work I do is pro-bono. I don’t need some smug judges who don’t have to pay for their CLE hours because they are “public servants” telling me to do more work for nothing. I am at the end. If things have gotten...

Are you tired of snotty kids? I know I am. No, not the crumb grinding infant set. That’s another story. I’m talking about the sniveling 16 – 26 year olds that don’t have the common sense to come in out of the rain….and yet….they act like they have the wisdom of the ages locked in their puny little brains. In reality, they know jack. Take away their hand held and I doubt if they could add two plus two and come up with four!!! I was channel surfing the other night and came across Reba McIntyre’s new program Malibu something or other. Reba is the hapless parent surrounded by two teen age brats who are endowed with unending wisdom, and her former pot head mother played by Lily Tomlin who knows the answer to life resides somewhere between marijuana and LSD. Never mind that it’s Reba who has to pay the bills and hold everything together. She’s just a schmuck, a poor working schmuck. In many ways this show is emblematic about our society today. Those who are working and trying to m...