Cold and Rainy I spent my entire adult life living in the Northeastern United States, most of it in the Metro New York area, but also up here in Ithaca. Using Ithaca for this math, the average annual rainfall is 37.4 inches, with snowfall of 63.3 inches, resulting in 159.3 days with precipitation, leaving 155 sunny days. That compares to Escondido, which only gets 15.2 inches of rain (no snow) on 41.6 rainy days and…
The Immutable Power of Nature I have pontificated on many subjects here and in general. Pondering the great truths of life is something I am prone to doing more and more the older I get. I think in some ways that is very natural, but in other ways I have an unnatural need to declare these great truths, not so much because I don’t think others have thought them before me, but rather because I…
When Work is Done Does everyone know the joke about the sex survey that ends with the question, “How many people have sex only once a year?” And the little guy in the back is excitedly waving his arms and when asked why that makes him so happy he says, “Because tonight’s the night!” It’s a classic, right up there among the best because its all about wrong-footing the audience and then surprising them. I…
Arresting Development Back one summer in the mid-1990’s, I spent the Fourth of July weekend in Utah. Joining us that year was my nephew Alex, who must have been in high school at the time. We had taken a side trip to Fort Bridger, Wyoming where I had stopped at a roadside fireworks emporium and bought some seemingly harmless fireworks to shoot off in celebration of Independence Day. When the day came and it was…
Independence Day Today was July 4th. My whole life, July 4th has been a very special day for me. It began in my memory when I lived in Costa Rica in 1959 and 1960. As expats in a small far-away land, we were invited to the U.S. Embassy Independence Day barbecue, which was herald each year on the grounds of the Embassy in San Jose. It was a special day and we used to make…
On the Wine Trail The Finger Lakes area was designated in 2018 as the best wine growing area in the U.S. That is probably surprising to those who have only thought about Napa and Sonoma as holding that honor, but there are lots of reasons that the area has become such a winery-rich area. At last count there are over 120 wineries in the finger Lakes, nestled amongst the eleven Finger Lakes (Canadice, Canandaigua, Cayuga,…
Trashing It When I got my first vacation home back in 1987, it was a newly-built cabin on a three-acre wooded hillside in Hillsdale, New York, on the borderline of being in the Berkshires. The Berkshires (Egremont and such) were more toney and more expensive and this was my first vacation home. I paid cash for it and did a lot of the furnishing and fixing up myself. I had three local brothers who should…
When I’m 64 Today is Kim’s birthday, and yes, she turns 64 years old. So, naturally, the Beatles 1967 song from The Yellow Submarine album comes to mind. That song was written by John Lennon, who would be 82 this year and Paul McCartney, who is 80 years old this year. I am four years past that milestone birthday and that would hardly qualify as a milestone were it not for this very song. The…
The Toothless Lion Over the course of my drive to Ithaca, I listened to an audio book called River of the Gods by Candice Millard. It is the story of the search for the headwaters of the Nile River in the mid-Nineteenth Century. It was a fascinating book that focused on two explorers I had never heard of before. The main protagonist was Captain Richard Burton and his assistant and nemesis was John Speke. We…
Heading Out to the Rogue’s Harbor This has been the first day of of the grandkids here in Ithaca. While I spent my day getting the carriage house finished from my purge of memorabilia and ready for son Thomas’ arrival tomorrow night, Kim did what Kim loves to do, which is go out and shop for miscellaneous things we need for the weekend. We will have sixteen for the bulk of the holiday weekend, so…