Craig Ruvere

27Aug 2020 by CJ

Long Term Care Insurance is an investment in you AND your family

Early on in my married life, the subject of Long Term Care Insurance was never a conversation at the dinner table. As is common with most people today, we certainly weren’t thinking about aging – choosing to live (and spend) in the here and now rather than dwell on realities aging might bring. But the realities of aging - of becoming ill and dying – are an unavoidable part of everyone’s journey. While we ourselves might still be relatively young and healthy, those who have come before us are sadly growing older. Before long, the case for Long Term Care Insurance is profoundly staring us in the face. My grandparents were not wealthy, and truthfully, I’m not even sure such plans existed in the 1970s and 1980s, when it would…

20Aug 2020 by CJ

Driving While Black shows how often whites take traveling for granted

Information & Education, Life & Living

Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, is a book penned by Dr. Gretchen Sorin, a distinguished professor at The State University of New York College at Oneonta (SUNY). I was made aware of the book’s existence in a very unlikely place – a guest article in my latest edition of MotorTrend. For those of you unaware, MotorTrend is an American automobile magazine which dates back to September 1949. My wife and I had just completed reading several informative books on race – White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. I highly recommend both. When the September issue of MotorTrend landed in my mailbox with the Driving While Black guest article, it seemed like fate was…

11Aug 2020 by CJ

News is everywhere and sometimes it’s better to stay silent

Life & Living

News is everywhere, and its sole purpose today seems to encourage divisiveness rather than unity. Today’s societal climate is a raging sea of confusion, judgment, adversity and animosity. The information being reported - both accurately and inaccurately - is extremely impactful as we go about our daily lives, none of which are spared involvement in one way or another. The era of definitive and esteemed experts has been replaced by the internet’s unending stream of information. It often lacks credibility and statistical proof yet remains revered by those who cannot discern between what’s factual and what’s propaganda. This unending internet stream allows individuals to find the information which best supports their feelings, claims, views, decisions and biases – maintaining ignorance rather than challenging their own beliefs and trying to…

04Aug 2020 by CJ

Audi ad shows how society cannot differentiate between good and bad

Life & Living, Youth

An article recently ran on CNN.com entitled, “Audi pulls 'insensitive' ad featuring girl eating banana in front of car”. It’s not often you hear of an Audi ad sparking such controversy, so I thought it was worth a click-through to the full story. It seems that over the weekend, the German luxury automaker shared a photo on social media with the caption, “Lets your heart beat faster – in every aspect” – publicizing their RS4 sports sedan. The caption wasn’t an issue but apparently the imagery was. From the NY Daily News: “The image shows a cool-looking young girl — wearing a leopard-print dress, a denim jacket, pink rounded sunglasses — eating a banana, while the wind blows her hair off her face. She’s also leaning against the grille of…

03Aug 2020 by CJ

Phubbing – competing with a hand-held device for your time

Information & Education, Life & Living

You’ve probably never heard of the word “phubbing” before, but I’d wager to say you’ve applied what it means with some regularity. On Psychology Today, Emma Seppälä, Ph.D. writes, “Phubbing is the practice of snubbing others in favor of our mobile phones.” In other words, when someone is having a conversation with you or a small group, you’re on your cell phone pretending to listen. Such practice was originally thought to be linked to inconsiderate and entitled teenagers who had little to no understanding of what it means to be respectful. But phubbing no longer discriminates by age as 40 somethings and even 70 somethings now practice it consistently on their cell phones and smart watches regardless of whose company they’re in. A Time magazine article states, “Several studies have shown that…