It’s not unusual for me to get into a disagreement with somebody on the subject of affluence. I recall in college during freshman year having a debate with my friend Debbie about the definition of affluence. Debbie was one of 10 children in a family headed by an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant, and as we sat there as freshman at an elite Ivy League school, I argued that she came from an affluent family.…
As I have said more times than I can count, I hate the tropics. The reason for it is probably mostly about humidity and comfort, but it has mostly to do with my heritage. I was born in Fort Lauderdale while my mother was on home leave from her life in Venezuela. I like telling the story that she told her friends at the time that she knew she was having a boy and she…
Key West has one of the most colorful and layered histories of any American city, shaped by geography, smugglers, wreckers, and artists alike. The island was originally inhabited by the Calusa people, who called it “Cayo Hueso” (Island of Bones) — likely a reference to skeletal remains they left there. Spanish explorers encountered the island in the early 16th century, and the name was eventually anglicized to “Key West.” Spain ceded Florida to the United…
I have a classic “moth to the flame” personality. Being irresistibly drawn to something — or someone — that is ultimately dangerous or destructive seems to be in my DNA. The attraction is so powerful that I cannot help myself, even when the outcome is potentially or predictably bad. The armchair shrinks in the audience will say that this implies self-destructive tendencies that forces me to operate through compulsion more than it’s about trickery by…
Because we are flying to Key West on Wednesday, someone suggested that we should watch the movie True Lies because the ending scenes are shot in the Florida Keys. True Lies is a 1994 film directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold. It’s basically a spy comedy about Iranian terrorists trying to extract retaliation from the United States. While I had seen the movie years ago. I had…
Both Kim and I have had bariatric surgery. I had a lap-band installed around my upper stomach to restrict my intake of food. It was installed in 2006 and has been operating in that capacity for almost twenty years. Technically, the device was designed to be adjusted regularly with a saline inlet portal, but I quickly determined that fine tuning is not necessary for me and that the absolute restriction did a good job of…
Today we are planning to go to SeaWorld here in San Diego. We’ve now lived here more than six years and owned this hilltop for fourteen years, which means we have been here long enough to have tried almost every attraction in the area. That said, I have not been to SeaWorld since I came here in 1990 for a father/son roadtrip with my oldest son Roger. I had recently separated from Roger’s mother and…
Yesterday we spent the day seeing all there was to see in Death Valley. We started my backtracking 18 miles to a place called Dante’s view. This is the peak of a ridge that defines to the east, the formal Death Valley configuration. Looking down from this high spot, required us to walk up along, sloping hillside, culminating out of viewing area with all the normal models and placards showing us what we were looking…
I have often spoken of my love for National Geographic magazine. This has less to do with the memory of the yellow-bordered magazines arriving on our doorstep (I just got my latest issue in the mail yesterday), and more about my childhood fascination with antiquities and anthropology, an obsession which stays with me to this day. When we think of the modern challenges in the publishing industry, we find people (like my slightly older friend…
During the day, I sometimes hear phrases that catch my attention. That happened yesterday while watching a special about the life and times of Linda Ronstadt. I don’t even remember the context, but when she said in an interview, “sometimes I wish I didn’t”, it stuck with me. Linda got Parkinson’s somewhere along the way and it affected her ability to sing. She last performed on stage in 2009, when she was 63. She was…