Tomorrow we drive up to L.A. for a long weekend while Kim is off in Wabash. In 2002 I lived in L.A. for six months and must say, was not so fond of the lifestyle as I thought I might be. It may have been the circumstances of my life at that time, but I have a hard time getting past the things about the city that didn’t appeal to me. First among those things…
As everyone in the free world seems to know, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey released in theaters today. It’s an epic adaptation of Homer’s poem, shot entirely on IMAX 70mm. Christopher Nolan is a British-American writer-director known for cerebral, visually ambitious blockbusters that mix big ideas with large-scale spectacle. You either love or hate his movies. Memento was his breakout reverse-chronology thriller (which I put into the hate category). His The Dark Knight trilogy redefined the…
My daughter Carolyn has a penchant for finding unusual and fun activities when she comes out here for her summer vacation with her family. This year is no exception to that despite this being the fourth year of coming out for the month of July. But we’ve done most of the regular activities within striking distance of our hilltop already. This year she mentioned that they had never been to the town of Julian, which…
I am doing a case with a group of lawyers located in Perth, Australia. Western Australia is an intriguing part of the world for me for some reason and I have no explanation for that. One of my old high school pals in Rome was from Perth, but it’s hard to believe that has anything to do with it. I suspect that it has more to do with the fact that the western side of…
Cathexis is a psychoanalytic term meaning the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, idea, or activity. It originates, like so many words, from the Greek kathexis (which means “holding” or “occupation”). To “cathect” something is to invest psychic energy in it, to become emotionally attached to or fixated on it. The term is largely confined to psychoanalytic and academic psychology contexts today and you won’t hear it much in everyday speech,…
San Francisco has always enjoyed the reputation of a highly desirable city. It seems forever that I’ve heard people say they would love to live in San Francisco. If only there were the kinds of job opportunities that could keep them here. Back in the day, San Francisco was the big West Coast commercial city from which trade with Asia and the East Coast of the United States took place. We know that the state…
This morning I am on a plane to San Francisco. This was not a planned trip, but rather was an anticipated trip that I knew would come sooner or later and may well not be the last of these trips in the near future. You see, I’m going to visit a long-time friend who is not well. I don’t use the term pilgrimage lightly just to refer to a casual trip to visit a friend.…
I’ve not always been complimentary about the medical profession. The advent of AI in our daily lives has added to that tendency. For some reason, the Google phenom with the likes of WebMD never captured my attention and certainly not my medical confidence. But that’s all changed now thanks to Claude. Claude is now my trusted advisor on all sorts of things, including medical needs. Claude sent me to the ER for stroke/TIA screening a…
About a week ago my daughter Carolyn, who is the source of many of the great new innovations in my aging life (she’s the one who put me onto stretch – U, among other things), told me I needed to get an Oura Ring. An Oura Ring is a “smart” ring worn on your finger (preferably the left index finger) that tracks health and wellness data using sensors rather than a screen or buttons. It…
I’m back on a train today, which is somewhat surprising given our questionable experience with Amtrak on the California Zephyr a few months ago. The romance of train travel is a hardwired sensibility that must be embedded deep in the Amygdala, where memories with emotional weight are tagged. This is why intense or emotional experiences like train travel feel “deeper” or more vivid and are recalled more easily. A few things converge to make train…