The year I graduated from college (1975), Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons came out with their song December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) and it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Since I was nine years old in 1963 I’m not sure there was anything special going on in my life on that date, but the original song, written by Bob Gaudio (Big Girls Don’t Cry, Rag Doll, Walk Like a Man, Bye…
If someone asked me how I define how I am doing at any point in time, I would tend to focus on many of the same things everyone thinks about with regard to their wellbeing. People usually weigh their wellbeing across several overlapping areas starting with physical health, gauged by sleep, exercise, nutrition, energy, managing illness or pain, and preventive care. They then move to mental and emotional health like stress, mood, resilience, and a…
As I have mentioned before, I seriously studied modern revolutions in college, so much so that I actually considered an offered sponsorship to do graduate work in the area. The topic has always fascinated me. Just to review, a revolution is a fundamental, usually rapid change in who holds power and how a society is governed, typically driven from below by mass mobilization rather than by elections or normal politics. There are political revolutions when…
I was recently at a dinner where someone asked who we each had our first crush on. I have to go way back to 1960 when I saw the Disney movie Pollyanna, which starred Haley Mills and earned her an honorary juvenile Oscar. Pollyanna was Disney’s adaptation of Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 novel, directed by David Swift. Hayley Mills plays Pollyanna Whittier, an orphaned missionary’s daughter sent to live with her wealthy, rigid Aunt Polly…
Don’t worry, this is neither a story about car insurance mascots nor tropical lizards. Rather, what got me started on this theme is Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987) character, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas (he won the Best Actor Oscar for it). Stone, whose father was a Wall Street stockbroker, built the character from several ’80s figures including Ivan Boesky (the biggest source). His 1986 Berkeley commencement line that greed is healthy became Gekko’s…
How does man attain perfection? Mostly by giving up on the idea that perfection is something you arrive at. Many great thinkers took the question seriously and pondered it. Plato said that the soul became perfected by ordering reason over appetite, guiding itself toward what he called the “Form of the Good”. The Form of the Good is the highest reality, the source that makes all other Forms (Justice, Beauty, Equality) both exist and be…
The older I get the more I think that while I’m not a communist. I may be a Marxist (Karl as opposed to Groucho, though I did like Groucho’s chutzpah). Marxism is the body of social, economic and political theory that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed in the mid-1800s. It rests on a few core ideas. Marx’s “historical materialism” holds that the way a society produces its goods and services shapes everything else: its…
Oligarchy is a form of government or power structure in which control rests with a small group of people, usually distinguished by wealth, family, military power, or corporate influence, rather than with the public at large. The word comes from the Greek oligos (“few”) and arkhein (“to rule”). In modern usage it often describes systems that may be formally democratic but where a wealthy elite has outsized sway over policy and institutions. Post-Soviet Russia’s business…
Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good World War II movie. I’m actually quite torn between Pacific Theatre in the European Theatre and enjoy them both for different reasons. In the 20 years after the war ended, some of the best of those movies came out movies like 12 O’clock High, Run Silent Run Deep, From Here to Eternity, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Guns of…
Texas toast is extra-thick sliced white bread, usually cut about twice the normal thickness that’s buttered (often with garlic) and griddled or toasted until golden outside and soft inside. Who doesn’t love a slice of Texas toast? It’s commonly served alongside barbecue, chicken-fried steak, or fried chicken (Raising Cane’s made it famous), and the extra thickness makes it great for French toast or hearty sandwiches. Most food historians trace it to Texas diners and drive-ins…