Author: Judge Michael Boyajian

I once had an experience so horrible I just wanted to run as far away from it as I could.  I was on a subway platform when a man rolled down the stairs onto the platform and onto the tracks.  I heard all of this, but did not see it only the sound of his tumble, the screams of onlookers and the oncoming train.  They did manage to get the man off the tracks in time.

Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Mo Yan in his novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out depicts modern China as a universe parallel to and in contrast to Buddhism with a series of deaths and rebirths symbolizing movement between eternal suffering and peace.

I recently took a DNA test through ancestry.com and I learned that I was not 100% Armenian but rather 36% European Jewish and 61% Turkish/Persian/Caucuses in origin.  My DNA crossed three great people – the Jews, Christians and Muslims providing unique perspectives.  Inspired I ordered the PBS Heritage Series, Civilization and the Jews.

I have this recurring vision that political cartoonist Thomas Nast is still alive and he portrays the head of Goldman Sachs as a crouching beast with a serpent’s tail, devil horns and a long wet snake tongue.

I have this recurring vision that political cartoonist Thomas Nast is still alive and he portrays the head of Goldman Sachs as a crouching beast with a serpent’s tail, devil horns and a long wet snake tongue.

My tendency of late to draw comparisons between the Ancient Romans and modern America has drawn criticism from some quarters with these critics saying that both peoples are different, distinct and separated from each other by two millennia and therefore using Roman actions as a guide to implementing American policy is inapplicable.

In the 1950s and 60s Americans became fascinated by the freedom of cross county travel inspired by Jack Kerouac books like On the Road and Dharma Bums.  But today many Americans feel that these are bygone days.  This is absolutely untrue.  There is a new generation of Dharma Bums who just don’t travel the U.S. but the entire world.

There is an ongoing dispute in the United States between bar associations, the legal profession and politicians as to how to select judges.  Should they be appointed by politicians or boards or elected after going through a political process.  None of these choices seems appropriate.

Senator John McCain’s repeated attacks on President Obama over the years shows the senator for what he is, a bitter frustrated old man whose legacy as a self proclaimed “maverick” is a thin veneer over a partisan right wing fanatic.

These are breath taking times as great civilizations rise again and hopes of world union and world peace begin to move in that direction.