Yikes!!! I came into adulthood when the housing boom really began in the mid-1970’s. I haven’t bothered to gather the actual data to back up my timing assertions, but I feel confident in saying that the era post-WWII until that time was an era of vastly expanded residential building and generally increasing access to the suburban American dream of owning a home. That and defined benefit pensions were the rewards American society chose to heap…
The Big Picture When you travel on vacation with a group, as we have done many times in the past with our motorcycle group, you end up spending time here and there with people who you might not otherwise go deep with. This happens at unusual times and places and under circumstances that perhaps even influence the nature of the conversation. Six years ago we did a flurry of travel in the fall of 2017.…
Risen Awareness Yesterday I was playing in the dirt. I was gardening, which is to say that after sleeping in (waking up at an unusually late 8am) and walking with Kim and Betty just to get the lotion from the motion benefit, I had a few errands to run (excess recycled cardboard is an extraordinary burden in retirement for some odd reason) and then decided I needed to tend to my garden. You see, later…
Clean-up on Aisle Six For years I have wanted to teach ethics in my business school course roster. For one reason or another, mostly, I imagine, because ethics is like Sociology… what could be so hard about it? Two years ago, I was given the chance and embraced it wholeheartedly. Setting up a course is always a lot of work. This is especially so when there is no defined curriculum. In my thirteen years of…
Return to the Mist For some reason I am back on the get-up-early program. The good news is that I’m sleeping a bit longer at a stretch, but the bad news is that I’m waking up on East Coast time for some reason. One of the best parts about that is that I get a jump on the day and I get to sit at my desk and enjoy the view to the north. That’s…
And It’s Suddenly Summer Today is Easter Sunday and it has been a cloudless day with constant sunshine and a high of about 71 degrees. During my three years on this hilltop, that sort of profile of a day’s weather would have sounded cool rather than warm. But after the last three months, today felt like a warm summer day, and that seemed appropriate for Easter Sunday. After everyone had their brunch and left for…
Life in the High Court As part of my experience as an expert witness, I once got an assignment in the London High Court, which is the court of England and Wales where civil cases are tried. While the American legal system is based on English Common Law, it is fair to say that the two systems are still very different. According to the textbooks, English Common Law is controlled by a combination of statutes,…
Yucca on the Brain When I bought this house eleven years ago, I could see it had a beautiful garden, but that was from a quick drive-by from the bottom of the driveway. I never actually set foot on the property until the closing a few months later. At that time I had heard about succulents, but I really didn’t know an agave from an aloe from a yucca. When I moved out here to…
Killing Myself Softly When I was in college we had music and we had TV, but there were no home computers, no internet, no Worldwide Web, and certainly no social media. There are many things that these advancements have provided us and I have generally been a big proponent of technological advance. I would go so far as to say that I have positioned myself until recently on the bleeding edge of that change. I…
Trash Talk Today is Wednesday, which means it is trash day here in Hidden Meadows, or at least on our little hilltop within Hidden Meadows. I don’t make it my business to know the trash pick-up schedule of the local surroundings, though the very visible trash cans at the curb are a dead giveaway, so I suppose I could figure it out if I cared to. In actuality, Thursday is the pick-up day, but Wednesday…