An Invasion of an Unusual Hut I have just discovered a treasure trove of handwritten stories done by my mother when she was transitioning from high school to College. These are stories on lined paper, written in ink in very neat cursive writing and in this first story’s case, written on Thursday, October 26, 1933 by Millie (Ludmilla) A. Uher. Given that she wrote this when she was just seventeen, presumably a Freshman at…
How Bad Do You Want It? By Steve Larsen It has never occured to me to have guest writers on my blog, but one of my loyal readers and, indeed, both a close friend and writing (and riding) collaborator, Steve Larsen, has sent me a story and I am inclined to publish it today rather than save it for some lazy moment when I need a post. It deserves better than that, so here it…
Remembrances This week Kirk Douglas died at the very ripe age of 103 years. He was born in December, 1916 in upstate New York. My mother, who always liked Kirk, was born in September, 1916 also in upstate New York. They grew up about 150 miles apart. She lived 100 years and died three years ago last week. In the same way that Kirk Douglas, a.k.a. Issur Danielovitch, was the child of immigrants from Belarus,…
The Art of Doing Father/son scenes always mean a lot to me. It may be because I had so few, if any, with my father, or it may because I try to do so many with my sons. Obviously the two are connected, but I still find they drill deep with me. Baseball seems to be a common landscape for these interactions given its prominence as an aging, but still inter-generational common ground. The first…
California Dreaming My readers are probably tired about hearing me prattle on about the joys of the Golden State, but please indulge me this last time to wallow in the earthly pleasures I find myself amidst out here in San Diego. I am still adjusting to waking up in this paradise and pinching myself that this is what I get to wake up to every morning form here on in. This morning I had a…
Sweeping the Garage I have used the analogy of sweeping the garage for many years. It is my way of saying that every life needs to include some trivial tasks, not because they cannot always be avoided, but because doing basic tasks is good for the soul. This is somewhat about reminding ourselves that being of service and not vending every aspect of our lives, even when we have the means to do so, is…
Genesis Today is the first day of my new life in San Diego. Let me not start with something misleading (as the polite fact-checkers like to say about Donald Trump’s speeches). It is the first day of my permanent residence in the enclave of Hidden Meadows in the northern part of the town of Escondido in the north-county of San Diego County in the great state of California. California is symbolized by the Great Hulking…
Fox and Friends It’s happening in Miami, but you can only watch the Super Bowl on Fox Sports. Twenty years ago I dated a woman who worked at Fox Sports and I don’t recall having my skin crawl at the mention of Fox, but things are different now. I don’t think it was Bombshell or even The Loudest Voice in the Room that did it to me, but they certainly helped to lock in…
Footballing It’s Super Bowl Sunday and in nine hours the LIV (54th) game will be played between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers have won five Super Bowls, the latest being twenty-six years ago in the days of Joe Montana.and Steve Young. By contrast, the Chiefs were last in the Super Bowl fifty years ago for game IV. That was actually the first year the game was formally called the…
Chillaxing We have now officially moved out of our apartment and into the next door Hampton Inn. It’s funny, sometime after the financial crash of 2008, I imagine some aggressive developer who owned this building on Water Street stroked his chin about what to do with this underperforming B-class office building. Downtown office space was not in very high demand (except with HMO’s for some reason) as most of the action had moved well off…