Selling Out the Cheap Seats Tonight we are watching Seabiscuit, which is one of the great inspirational movies. It always leaves me with a lump in my throat, especially when the Depression-era narrative is explaining the backdrop of the socioeconomic lay of the land across America in the 1930’s. Seabiscuit raced from 1935 to 1940, when the weariness of the Great Depression had worn down the common folk of America. Seabiscuit was a horse of…
What’s Up With Pumpkins? When I was growing up, Halloween was a very special kids’ holiday, mostly because of Trick-or-Treat, but also because of the pageantry of the costumes and the fun and spooky events and parties. It really is a kid’s paradise, and at the center of it all is the ubiquitous jack-o-lantern, which are created as another special event of carving pumpkins on the kitchen table. From my youth, you had two choices…
Jury Duty One of the obligations of citizenship in this country is to make yourself available for jury duty when and if called. We cannot pontificate about the importance of the rule of law, a topic that gets mentioned every five minutes or more on cable news these days, if we do not help to support the judicial system by making yourself available to become part of the proverbial jury of our peers to adjudicate…
Not So Fast Abernathy One of my favorite old go-to jokes is about the Marine drill sergeant who has to find a way to tell one of his recruits that his mother has died. He is not a warm and fuzzy guy, so he comes up with what he thinks is a good way. At the next muster, once the troops are lined up at attention, he says, “Everyone who has a mother, take one…
Adjusting to Reality I’m back at home now (actually on my second day already) and I am slowly getting back into the swing of life on the hilltop. We were gone for almost three weeks, but that was shorter than the five weeks we were away in Ithaca and on our cross-country trip this summer, but this must have been more of a real vacation to me because I feel like I need to come…
Up In The Air One of the things that Kim and I agree completely about is that the worst part of traveling is the actual traveling. In the case of going back and forth to Europe or the Middle East from San Diego, its an especially grueling ordeal that usually involves at least three flights. We usually like to transit through New York so we can see the kids. On our flight over this time…
Prickly Neck Do you know that feeling when the angel of death passes over you and something happens to make you feel kinda weird as the specter of the infinity of time brushes by? I just finished a motorcycle ride of 1,600 miles across northern Spain and I had only one close call when some oncoming idiot came around a curve in the mountains too hot to handle and drifted a few feet into my…
Old White Couples While we were in Barcelona or riding our motorcycles through the Pyrenees and then across the northern coast of Spain, we were very pleased to find that there were not scads of people everywhere. It was especially nice that the roads, which were truly exceptional in condition, were largely wide open with only occasional other vehicles, very often other motorcycles doing some version of the same tour that we were engaged in.…
The Ironbound There is a section of Newark that is downtown and got its name from being a transportation hub with lots of tracks all around it. It was also an area where there has historically been a lot of metalworking industry including the second largest metal smelting and refining plant in the U.S. Needless to say, this is a working class neighborhood and I have known people who are alternatively ashamed and proud to…
Buen Camino We are in Palacio Carmen in Santiago de Compostela, the end of The Way of St. James or, as it is more commonly called, the Camino de Santiago. The Way gathers from all over Europe , wherever pilgrims start their trek. To get an official stamp and certificate you have to walk at least 100 km of the Camino or, if you are on a bicycle, at least 200 km. Based on that,…