Strapping it On In October 1996, I rode my new yellow and black Honda Valkyrie, a monster of a motorcycle, up to Woodstock Vermont to go on a very chilly ride through the fall foliage of New England. I was meeting our good friends Frank and Barbara O’Connell at their place on the Ottauquechee River, called Robinson Farm. It was a notable farm because it has a massive barn that sits on the hillside and…
Reliving My Life I have for a long time prided myself in saying that I have no regrets. That is my way of saying that I feel I have lived a good life and that I have learned form every step I have taken, whether it turned out well for me or badly. I can point to a number of setbacks in my life, but none of them cause me to regret having gone down…
The Shrinking World For most of my life, the world has gotten bigger. My mother took her small Upstate New York perspective in 1946 and globalized herself by going to work for the Rockefeller Foundation in Venezuela. No trip to Italy for her, she went right out to the deep end of the pool in the mountains of the Orinoco. I inherited that global orientation by being born on the shores of Southern Florida and…
Crossing the Line I voted for Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984. I admit it and with the benefit of hindsight I think I contributed to the downfall of the liberal democracy that worked so well for our country from 1945 until 1980. I was actually more a fan of George HW Bush back in those days, but he didn’t have the momentous that Reagan had, so I stayed with the team and we…
Doubt For some reason, tonight I chose to put on the Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams movie from 2008 called Doubt. It is an interesting movie about a Catholic priest in a working class neighborhood that is the subject of scrutiny about his relationship with a young black student, as instigated by an older very cynical mother superior and a young more sympathetic teacher/nun. The story is about the attitudes of people…
Coming and Going This weekend was all about Kim’s Encore vocal group show. She had performances on both Friday and Saturday nights and each one lasted for 2 hours+. I went to both shows, as is my habit with her performances. The first night we had friends Oswaldo & Gary, Sam & Chris, sister Kathy & Bennett as well as nephew Josh, Haj, JJ and Leila, who drove down from Pasadena. In addition to several…
Living with a BooBoo It’s been two days since I sliced off the top of my thumb with a really sharp Japanese sickle blade and my left thumb has mostly stopped throbbing, but is still very much bandaged up for protection while that nasty wound heals. The good news is that it was a very clean slice that took off a wedge chapped piece of the gardening glove I was wearing and a small piece…
Reparations The 2020 movie called Worth that stars such greats as Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci and Amy Ryan is about the valuing of lives lost in the 9/11 tragedy. It is a fascinating study in how professionals go about putting human lives into dollars and cents and it may be one of the more instructive stories to help us deal with the next great reparations issue, dealing with the compensation for African Americans who’s ancestors…
Charlie Bit My Finger! There was a very cute YouTube video a few years ago with a little boy playing with his infant brother, Charlie. Age one point, Charlie chomps down on the older boy’s finger to the point of sufficient pain to have him howl to his mum that “Charlie bit my finger!” in the best of British accented style. Well, today, I am typing on my iPad with 9 fingers since my left…
Waiting For Miss Betty It was almost three years ago that we adopted Betty (a.k.a. Cheyanne, the senior stray dog that was picked up on the streets of East L.A.). Betty has diabetes and, at the time we adopted her, was blind and scrawny. She has since had her teeth fixed (mostly pulled), had cataract surgery, and put on a regimen of daily eye drops and vitamins, not to mention a combination of very healthy…