Babylon Revisited After two days of raucous holiday festivities on the hilltop (22 in attendance on Christmas Eve and 14 in attendance on Christmas Day), by late afternoon we were ready to crash hard as the day wound down and the travelers hit the road for points known and unknown. We were left with Tom and Jenna and Kim and I with the added knowledge that Tom and Jenna would be leaving in the morning…
Leaving My Wingman As the sun comes up in the east and I can feel that graininess in my eyeballs that comes from insufficient sleep, I am comforted in knowing that at the other end of my house on the hilltop, my little baby boy (Thomas) is fast asleep with his fiancé, Jenna. How they got there only several hours ago is a story of holiday travel 2022 that I feel may be worth sharing.…
The Warmth of the Season Today it is 70 degrees warmer here on the hilltop than it is in frigid New York City. I got a Snapchat this morning from my daughter, who lives in Brooklyn that had her dog, Abe, running around their place with a knit Santa suit on. The video stated that it was 8 degrees, implying that Abe was lucky to be clad to stay warm. Meanwhile, back here on the…
Starry Starry Night Last night we had the pleasure of going to what is called the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. To begin with, Ernest Rady is a self-made philanthropist who has given away billions of dollars mostly to help sick children, but also to enhance his adopted home of San Diego. The Rady Shell is a acoustical marvel and is a outdoor bandshell sitting on a spit of land adjacent to the San Diego…
Top of the Wall Everywhere I look these days, I am seeing articles about one of two issues: homelessness in America and the crisis and the U.S. border with Mexico. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the two issues. On the one hand people from all over the world, especially Central America are finding the conditions in their countries intolerable and abuse for risking life and limb to get to the U.S. border to seek…
The Quantum of Life I have written in the past about string theory and ring theory, but doubt I could give you an elevator pitch on either. I think I am a reasonably intelligent guy, and I’m certainly well-educated by most standards. Nonetheless, I know a fair bit about my limits. I hit some of those limits ( a funny mathematical pun which gets me right to my “limit” when it comes to mathematics) as…
Wandering Through Caracas I spent my first four years of life in Caracas. I don’t think I really remember anything from Caracas even though I have a few mental images that could be a genuine recollection. Then I find an old black and white picture from those early days in Caracas and I realize that what I thought was a memory might have really been nothing more than my having seen the old photo. And…
The Enchanted Village Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and Kim gotta sing. Now that we live out here, Kim is singing with a choral ensemble called Encore. Technically they only have two big shows each year and one of those was last month in La Jolla, where she gave the Eleventh Hour solo, which was a big hit. Here we are a month later and Kim has volunteered with the group to sing in…
The Ethics of Ethics I am in a bit of an ethical funk at the moment and its about my ethics course, which I just finished and which I am preparing for next semester. For all the years I have been teaching (since 2007 to be precise), I have wanted to teach ethics at the graduate business school level. I suppose ethics in Kindergarten, Grade School, High School and Undergraduate is not so very different,…
The Sloth From the Black Lagoon I am back to my peaceful existence today on the hilltop. After a sleepless night spent grading and writing, I got some Z’s this morning before going to the “Perfect Workout” with Kim. She loves to say, as she did to the gym of four people this morning, that she can do anything for 20 minutes. That gives me the comedic opportunity to say back to the gym (while…