There is something about these years when Christmas and New Years fall in the middle of the week (this year it was Thursday) that make the holidays feel like they are somewhat extended. I don’t want to sound like the Grinch, but they seem to be dragging on. Truth be told, our relatives (other than son Tom) left quite briskly on the 26th and Tom did his usual departure on New Years Eve, all of…
It’s January 1 and the deluge has descended on the hilltop. We have a flat roof, so when it rains hard we really hear and feel it and it certainly has been raging hard this morning. There is a sort of end-of-the-world element to this morning’s rain since we cannot see even to the edges of our property with the heavy fog that is enveloping us. Last night at a simple and early gathering at…
My youngest son Tom is here for a few days by himself. Tom (a.k.a. Thomas) has been a regular and often visitor to Casa Moonstruck over the fourteen years we have owned this place. The hilltop and all its glorious views, weather and landscape seem to appeal to him just like they do to us. Now that Daughter Carolyn and her brood have spent three summers here (they have spent the month of July here…
For the second day in a row, I find myself sittting here in the living room of our hilltop with the sun shining brightly on a crisp December morning and the air being so clear that the Pacific Ocean feels to be right at our feet to the west. Just over the rolling hills of Vista that sit between our hilltop and the coast, we can see a full 40 miles of deep blue ocean.…
Twelve Years a Slave refers to both a powerful historical memoir and its acclaimed film adaptation. The memoir itself was written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York, who was kidnapped in Washington D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spent 12 years enslaved on plantations before being rescued in 1853. His detailed firsthand account became one of the most important slave narratives, providing unprecedented insight into…
Back in the mid-1960s we were living in Maine while my mother set up and ran the first women’s Job Corps center at the old Poland Spring resort complex. It was quite a change of pace and place for us. Discounting my first 4-5 years as a blur of on and off images, I had spent my life in two places, a tropical valley in Costa Rica and then a grad student subsistence life in…
I no longer know what to say about the state of our nation that I and others have said over and over again, especially during the course of 2025. When I encounter someone with an opposing worldview, a phenomenon we all must live with at what seems like increasing frequency, I understand that it is socially difficult to engage, so I, like so many of us, just shut down and walk away, mumbling something like,…
Like most large families that gather at the holidays, over the years, we have tried every imaginable configuration of gift-giving. Many families go with the “kids only” approach that suggests that adults need not get presents and that Christmas is for children. I’m not sure if we ever tried that, but if we did it either got immediately breached or quickly discarded mostly because Mrs. Claus (a.k.a. Kim) vetoed it based on her passion for…
We recently lost Jeff Grogg to the universe. Jeff was a beloved husband to Lisa, a beloved brother to Kim and Sharon, a beloved uncle to Will, Josh and even a non-Grogg like my son Tom and also a feisty as shit brother-in-law to me. About 30 years ago I stood a few miles from here at Mission San Luis Rey giving my first eulogy. That was for my father and I learned an important…
I feel great. No one has ever accused me of not being expressive, but I am having a hard time not telling the world how great I feel at the moment. I think this falls into the category of being thankful of my blessings, something I am always all about these days. And I know that there will be times and days when I do not feel great, so I like to acknowledge the moments…