When my mother was 76 (four years older than I am now), she got remarried after a matrimonial hiatus of 35 years. She married Irving Aaron Jenkins, a tall and robust ex-classmate from Cornell’s class of 1937 who was once engaged to her best friend in college and who had been widowed (from a different woman) several years before they reconnected after their 55th reunion. Irving was a few years older than my mother and…
Shoulder season refers to the travel periods between peak and off-peak seasons, typically spring and fall for most destinations. For example, in Europe, peak = summer (June–August) , when there are crowds, high prices, and hot weather (though Europe seems to be experiencing especially hot weather this spring as well). Off-peak = winter (November–February), when fewer tourists, it’s cheaper, and some attractions are closed. So, the “Shoulder Season” = April–May and September–October, or the sweet…
There are two types of scaling that are on my mind this morning. The first is the kind that comes from hard water. Hard water is simply water that contains elevated levels of dissolved minerals, primarily calcium and magnesium, picked up as water moves through rock and soil before reaching your tap. It’s measured in grains per gallon (GPG) or parts per million (PPM) with the gradation definitions being Soft: 0–3 GPG, Moderate: 3–7 GPG,…
We’ve said for several years that we are prepared to travel less. Whether its about the guiltiness of affluence, the burdens of the road, the ache for extended comfort, the throngs at all the favored and best places, the growing realization that the wealth of the world is outpacing my once meaningful edge or just the creeping in of the dreaded “been there, done that” syndrome, doesn’t really matter in this moveable feast of an…
This morning it is 52 degrees and moist on the hilltop. I’m preparing for my trip back east on Monday and being sure to pack some beachwear for my sailboat ride on the Chesapeake and Rehoboth Beach combing when I visit my son, Roger. Something seems off with this picture. This May Gray day is not so atypical for this time of year in San Diego, but it never feels entirely right either. As part…
On the recommendation of my vaunted National Geographic, I am listening to Cave of Bones by Lee Berger, the paleoanthropologist who is arguably the most prolific and controversial fossil hunter of his generation. I love antiquities and spent a fair amount of time in my youth hunting fossils and artifacts from places like burial mounds. I have a meaningful collection of pre-Colombian art that I dug up in Costa Rica when I was living there…
For 86 days now, 26 more than allowed for under the War Powers Act, we have been reading about and listening to war news from the Middle East. The War Powers Act (formally the War Powers Resolution) was passed by Congress in November 1973 over President Nixon’s veto in the aftermath of Vietnam. It is one of the most important and most consistently violated pieces of legislation in American constitutional history. The immediate context in…
Have you heard about the agnostic, dyslexic insomniac? He stays up all night wondering if there’s a Claude. Oh my Claude! I cannot believe all that I am reading and hearing this morning and it is blowing my mind (which the AI world now calls a “meat computer”). How do I unpack this best? I must start with Pope Leo XIV…I absolutely LOVE the guy. I didn’t think I could love a Pope more than…
I am listening to James Clavell’s well-known novel about the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Whirlwind. You might think I did this purposefully because of our current situation in Iran, but that’s simply not the case. I was watching some old movie and the protagonist, a troubled young man, was reading Clavell’s King Rat, the story of a Japanese POW camp in Thailand in 1945, and I remembered how much I liked Clavell’s Asian series…
The phrase “Women: can’t live with them and can’t live without them” has a surprisingly deep lineage. The most ancient roots of the sentiment (perhaps not the exact wording), goes back to the Ancient Greek writer of comedy, Aristophanes, who expressed the core idea in Lysistrata in 411 B.C. Lysistrata is one of the most audacious comedies ever written and yet it was written during the brutal later years of the Peloponnesian War (Athens vs.…