Some topics beckon a writer but don’t justify a full column. The late Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle bundled these items, as does Mark Laflamme of the Sun Journal, and called them “three-dot columns.” Here, in the spirit of and in homage to Caen and to Mark, is a three-dots column . . .

*    *    *

What does Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, know that the rest of us don’t? Esperanza Spalding, a singer, told Marketplace (on public radio), “I don’t know what it is about Amazon but everything I buy there I never use. It just sits around. I love Amazon.” . . .

. . . Gross generalization department. Remember Snoopy lying on his back on top of the Peanuts comic strip doghouse? The word balloon one time said “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” Can’t tell you how many times it has struck me that conservatives seem to like people but dislike society, liberals like society but don’t particularly like to take their human beings one at a time . . .

. . . “Teddy Roosevelt, early and successful Republican president, wrote more books than Donald Trump has probably read.” (Paul Boot, foreign policy adviser to, among others, Sen. John McCain). . . .

. . . Women’s progress. Ever notice that fewer biker chicks these days ride behind their men on their hogs? Lots of gals ride their own bikes now. That’s positive change, yet I’ve only three times seen ‘cycles driven by a woman with a man hanging on behind. . . .

. . . Go figure. A graduate of Hampshire College from China (the communist one) bicycled across the U.S. Each night he asked someone to let him pitch his tent in the backyard. About 19 in 20 told him no. But the odds were better in Trump country, he wrote, the industrial Midwest, etc., where he found a host before asking 20 times. . . .

. . . Back-and-forth department. My late wife and I enrolled in 1980 as Democrats. By 1986, I was in business and dealing with Augusta. I got disgusted and changed to unenrolled. Then to Republican in 2006 when our state senator, who had helped our farm wrestle with the bureaucracy, ran for governor. I stayed Republican until 2016, when I went back to unenrolled to protest the party giving its nomination to Trump. Not that anyone noticed. Marilyn was more loyal to the Ds. Except for a few years as an R (for the same reason I had gone that way), she stayed a Democrat all her time in Maine. And, her father had been assistant Republican leader in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. When Marilyn made up her mind, she made up her mind. . . .

. . . Force of will. Last fall, I vowed not to watch any NFL game. Couldn’t accept the double standards on player behavior or the whitewashing of brain damage to players. Through will power, I kept the vow. Now, if I can just recover my will power of 2013 when I lost 63 pounds. . . .

. . . Huston Smith, a scholar of religion who pursued enlightenment in Methodist churches, Zen monasteries and Timothy Leary’s living room, died not long ago. He was 97. He said of warring religions, “If we are to be true to our own faith, we must attend to others when they speak, as deeply and as alertly as we hope they will attend to us.” . . .

. . . Binge watching Netflix leads to a moral comparison. Which trio is more reprehensible? Don Draper, Pete Campbell and Roger Sterling of Mad Men (about the advertising world of the ’60s)? Or Walter White, Gustavo Fling and Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad (about a methamphetamine empire)? The former do great harm to all around them, especially women, the latter are mostly decent toward some associates but do great harm to society. Of the six, only Pinkman seems to have a conscience, but he keeps losing it and refinding it. If it means anything, I found Breaking Bad compelling and binge watched it last year. I was done with Mad Men after a few episodes. . . .

. . . Huston Smith again, this time on the value of religions: “If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.” . . .

. . . Garrison Keillor wrote that commercial television was awful because it had to be, PBS was awful because it chose to be. That quote comes back when I see the tag for Channel 4 of Maine Public (which used to be MPBN). It is now children’s programs 24/7. Do kids really need TV at 3 a.m.? And a lot of it is stuff I doubt my kids would ever have watched. It is tagged PBSkids, but I can’t help seeing the logo as PB Skids. . . .

. . . Speaking of TV, have the guys in Hollywood ever understood anything about people who work with their hands? TV seldom tried to depict a working family until Norman Lear gave us Edith and Archie Bunker, and then it was as a gross stereotype of a bigot. TV did create a program based on a working guy named Arnie. But he was a foreman, telling other guys working on the loading dock what to do. That show lasted two seasons. I can think of only one show that came even close to portraying working folks accurately and with empathy, Roseanne. That was 30 years ago, and TV still doesn’t understand folks who work with their hands. And backs. And legs. . . .

Bob Neal is a retired farmer and editor. He finds that wisdom sometimes can be boiled down to a couple of sentences opened and closed with ellipses (three dots). More often not, though.

Copy the Story Link