“Between stimulus and response there is a space. That space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” – Victor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor, Author, Man’s Search for Meaning. Renewing our Vows On Tuesday July 5, I returned from a much needed sabbatical that was both physically rejuvenating and spiritually […]
Finish VTA, SVBJ 8.5.21
The pandemic is awful but, much worse, Dr. Lucy Shapiro, internationally honored scientist and chair of Stanford University Medical School’s Biology Department, declared recently that the world has begun the sixth mass extinction. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says that a bit differently when quoting the Nobel Prize winning 2018 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate […]
Imagine learning that your favorite airline suffered a crash last week and then failed to evaluate the cause. Imagine that your longtime physician amputated the wrong leg and never bothered to explore how that mistake was made. Now imagine that the vast majority of prosecutors throughout the country do not evaluate the actions of their […]
The Silicon Valley Ethics Roundtable (SVER) issued an op-ed a year ago urging strong public and private leadership to direct resources to the unique needs of the severely mentally ill homeless. A two-year-old county survey estimates 42% of the homeless population of over 9,000 to have a significant degree of mental illness, with 25% of those determined to be […]
“America puts the best of all of the world’s people through a smelter called democracy and the resulting amalgam is stronger than the sum of those individual populations working separately.” That paraphrase of a mid-1800s quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson was simplified to “melting pot,” a prideworthy term that applies to most Americans. The […]
Over the past two decades, elder abuse has not only been recognized as an ethical problem in our society, but as a clear danger for some of our seniors. In California, if an elder is experiencing physical, emotional or financial abuse, family members or others may go to court to protect the senior. County probate […]
California, New York, and 15 other progressive states asked auto makers to help fight rapidly worsening climate change by meeting cleaner Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Last year the federal government inexplicably cut that requirement. Four auto makers agreed with those 17 states to voluntarily continue to meet the more healthy CAFE standards. To […]
San Jose’s O’Connor Hospital, Gilroy’s St Louise Regional Hospital, and Morgan Hill’s De Paul Health Center were threatened with bankruptcy and closure a year ago. Had that occurred, the deluge of COVID19 emergency patients and last year’s Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting casualties would not have had access to timely treatment. The Board of Supervisors, County […]