Time in a Bottle The name of my blog, the Old Lone Ranger is taken from Jim Croce’s song, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, which was his third studio album, but his first real successful album. It spent 93 weeks on the charts and spanned the time before and after his tragic death in a small airplane crash. In fact, the album was ranked #1 on the charts for five weeks in early 1974…
The Snail’s Eye View It’s been unusually rainy here the last few weeks. I say that even though I have never been here for an extended period and certainly not at this time of year, but I think I’m on safe ground saying that. We have had a few days like yesterday when it rained cats and dogs as they say. It was a rain that would have made people in the tropics wonder what…
Holding Back the Rain We’ve begun watching a BBC series on Netflix called Call the Midwife, which is a period series set in the East End of London in the 1950’s, the decade of my own birth. It is the story of a young nurse, Jenny, who goes to work in the early days of the British National Health Service. She has trained as a nurse and midwife, but is sent into the bowels of…
Had a Car Like That Once Myself Today I saw a ray of hope that life as we know it may still go on. I bought a BMW R1250GS Adventure motorcycle from a friend up in Dutchess County. As I have written, he had a bad accident and has to sell an almost new motorcycle that he can no longer ride (technically, his wife says he can no longer ride). Since he is getting around…
Boy Interrupted If you saw the movie Girl Interrupted with Winona Ryder you will understand the concept I am going for here. In that movie, Winona spends eighteen months in a mental institution as she has shown an abject inability to cope with reality. There’s a bit of that starting to go around all over the place right now. I’m not sure its being deemed to be worthy of being committed, but there is certainly…
The Mask of the Old Lone Ranger In 1961 I was seven years old and intended to start second grade in that Fall at the Spring Harbor School in Madison, Wisconsin. We had moved that summer from Turrialba, Cost Rica and I was going to transition from a one-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the Institute where by mother worked and we lived, to a middle-American suburban grade school during what has come to be…
Going to War In 1972 I turned eighteen, which in those days was the age of majority on all fronts. At eighteen you could drive (even at night), you could drink (hopefully not before driving), you could vote (the 26th Amendment passed in 1970), and you could fight for your country without your parents’ permission (the single biggest argument favoring the 26th amendment). We needed young men (young women could also join but could not…
The Darkness Within This is no time for negativism. This is the time for us all to stay positive and optimistic that life will go on, that our species will persevere, and that the kindness of the human soul will prevail. When we saw Saudi Arabia rear up on its hind legs to push the oil production limits up at great expense to the price of their black crude, we were secretly encouraged. We all…
The Life of the Mind Today I had occasion to speak to a friend and colleague I worked with thirteen years ago and and saw probably five years ago. I have given him my blog address so, full disclosure, he may well be reading this just as you are reading this. Why do I mention that, because I am forever getting into hot water with people who share things with me and then find themselves…
Sucking the Marrow It’s late in the afternoon, but not so late that the sun is yet setting. My day starts early out here in San Diego. That is especially so on Tuesdays because Wednesday may be Prince Spaghetti Day (for those of you who grew up in or near Lowell, Mass.), but Tuesday is CEO Management Day. It is the day we get everyone together to update ourselves on what everybody is doing to…