Today is our first activity day of summer vacation with our grandkids. One of the things we like to do every year is go to the San Diego County fair at the Del Mar fairgrounds. Like much of California, San Diego County is truly a blend of urban coastal elite areas with expensive homes overlooking the Pacific Ocean and rural ranch country where cattle and coyotes are still the main topics of conversation. In between…
Today I saw a reposting of the June, 2024 cover of Rolling Stone that had a picture of Donald Trump adjusting his tie with the headline: “The Most Corrupt President Ever. Ever.” It went on to say, “From self-dealing to abuse of power, no president in history has put personal greed ahead of the country like Donald Trump.” And of course, that was BEFORE he started his second term and his recently exposed $2.2 billion…
Starting around 1887, foot races started with a “mark” or a line drawn to indicate the starting point of a race. Before that the lineage of “mark” meant a target or marked point, the same root behind “marksman” and “to make one’s mark.” Before starting blocks existed, race officials would scratch or paint an actual line into the dirt or track at the starting point. Runners had to position their feet exactly on or behind…
When we are kids, we revel in having fun. The world revolves around having fun at the early stages of life. You can see the instinct clearly in Buddy, who is still a young dog at three. When he wakes up in the morning, all he wants to do is play. He will come up to our faces in bed and try to convince us that its time to get up to play. He is…
In a few weeks Kim is heading off for her 50th high school reunion in Wabash, Indiana, her home town and where she spent the first 20 years of her life. Kim is not only connected to Wabash for family reasons…though she has very little family left there now, but also because it’s where her musical roots began. Over the years that Kim and I have been together, she went back to Wabash twice to…
It’s that funny transitional time of the summer when every morning starts out in a cloud and we wait and see when this hilltop will break through to the sun. It always does because summer is simply not a time for rain on this hilltop. I remember when I lived in Maine for three years back in the mid-60s. I worked on the golf course each of those three summers and so I was acutely…
I keep finding reasons to think about our friend Bill (of Dulcinea and Bill). He is gradually becoming one of my heroes and it has nothing to do with the fact that he seems to like reading my blog stories. What has caused me to think and write about him again this morning is the fact that I am taking Kim off for a routine colonoscopy this morning and we have been living with the…
I have been assaulted this morning by a wave of Supreme Court decisions which have flexed the muscles of the conservative majority with 6-3 votes which have strongly favored gun rights in America and supported the Trump anti-immigration policies that are all about restricting asylum seekers from our shores and deporting specific immigrants like Haitians and Syrians who we are generically deeming undesirable by some. Given that SCOTUS is anxious to go on their summer…
Do you know the Saturday Night Live (SNL) skits with Kristen Wiig as a part of the “Lawrence Welk Show” sketch series? However connected I might have been to the “Lawrence Welk Show” in my grade school days in Wisconsin, I feel more connected to Lawrence now since our hilltop is directly above the Lawrence Welk Resort (now owned by Marriott as a timeshare) that sits adjacent to Rt. 15 between Temecula and Escondido on…
I have a friend, Kevin, who likes to swim with sharks…for real. Kevin is a manly man. He hunts, he fishes, he dives, he motorcycles (on road, but especially the hardscrabble off-road type). He keeps horses and rides in fox hunts (is that even legal?) and owns several farms where he likes to drive his heavy equipment around and move earth and shit from one place to another. On one farm he owns in northwestern…