Hilltopping This morning I was driving to my favorite rock store, KRC, to pick up some bags of stabilized decomposed granite (DG) and I started noticing that every hilltop I could see, and there are plenty of hills around here to offer hilltops, is fully built out with one or two homes. Finding your own hilltop to command a view of the surrounding environs is obviously very popular. When we were in Italy recently on…
Ode to a Patty Melt My stomach has changed in ways that are still a mystery to me. For many years I could and did eat anything in whatever quantity I wanted and it all showed up where you would expect it would. I spent my entire adult life going from one failed diet or program to another. I was in Weight Watchers twice I think. I was in a St. Luke’s trial that was…
On the Shoulder About ten years ago I was in for an annual check-up with my doctor. He was an Irishman working as a GP at NYU and he had a good crisp sense of humor. In my effort to get my money’s worth from the visit, since I never seemed to have much wrong with me, I asked him about my right shoulder. It had been bothering me a little and I tried to…
Expert is as Expert Does Last night was a glorious last night in Rome for us after a little more than a week of enjoying the wonders of Italy. There were several things that made it so special, not the least of which was the venue itself. We had been invited by my Italian partner, Damiano, to join him at a restaurant owned by a childhood Palermo friend of his. That restaurant is on the…
The Young Man Within I am rewatching The Crown, that wonderful Netflix series about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II. The current episode starts with Winston Churchill speaking with his assistant, a young blonde woman who acts as his secretary. She is apparently infatuated with Churchill and at the suggestion by him that she spend more time with a young man her own age, she has taken to reading Churchill’s biography to acquaint…
Living Alone I returned home from a few weeks away yesterday. I had traveled from Rome to Munich to Newark, stayed two nights in Manhattan and flown home from JFK direct to San Diego. It is always a long ride back and forth from San Diego to Europe, but we make a point of using it to stop in NYC to see the kids whenever we can. This time I came home by myself since…
Me and Betty This is the start of day two since Natasha has gone home and before Kim returns. I can see that we have a routine and the secret seems to be to keep to that routine whenever possible. Betty has accustomed herself to sleep in the living room. I’m not sure why she prefers it to the bedroom, where she sleeps when Kim is here, but I must admit its easier for me…
On the Celtic Altar It’s another atypical day here on the hilltop. I have a very clear sense that the weather has been off for several months now. It just doesn’t feel much like Southern California, at least not as I know it. What keeps me from saying that more definitively is that this is only my third Spring living here, so I’m not sure I can speak so comprehensible about the weather patterns. My…
Scripto Ergo Cogito Ergo Disco Ergo Sum Rene Descartes started it all in 1637 in his Discourse on the Method, which most scholars consider his seminal philosophical work. I have amended it to read (in Latin), I write, therefore I think, therefore I learn, therefore I am. My default activity these days is to write. I know this especially now because I am finishing a ten day trip to New York and Italy and I…
Waiting for MLK Today is April 4th, the day fifty-four years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In those fifty-four years, it is hard to decide if we have made progress on civil rights and a true state of equality and justice for all in America. In the last few years we have seen more signs of resurgence of movements for white supremacy than I can recall seeing at any…