I had a conservation this morning with one of my red friends who I text with daily as a member of a motorcycle group. There are four of us and two of us are decidedly blue and two are just as red. But the truth is that as convenient as the clarity of red and blue might seem, reality is never that neat and tidy. The truth is that the four of us are all…
I wrote yesterday about Bill Ackman and his support of Trump. One of Bill Ackman’s 33 reason why he dislikes the Biden/Harris agenda was: #8 – “promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due…
The phrase “I don’t do windows” is well entrenched in Americana whether you consider it just a saying or an outright meme. The etymology of the phrase is cloudy, with most people wanting to attribute it to the sitcom maids of the 60’s and 70’s like Hazel or Florence (from the Jeffersons), but some recognizing that it goes back into the movies of the 30’s and 40’s as well. It’s in the same category as…
Humility is considered the foundation of all virtues in the Christian religion. It is equally valued in Judaism and Islam. I have wrestled with humility on many occasions in my life, but have generally found that it has far greater value than most any virtue that I can invoke. It is often hard-won through failure and the more success you have the more prone to setting it aside you can become. Being wrong is a…
I went to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis today. I felt I had to go see it even though it is being met with very mixed reviews and getting characterized much like Kevin Costner’s Horizon fiasco as a vanity play by an aging great one of film. Great filmmakers don’t seem to be able to fade away, they have to go out with a bang…and it’s usually one on the noggin. But then again, Megalopolis…
We’re in the town of Visalia for the night as we end our Oregon and Northern California roadtrip. I haven’t been in Visalia since 1981 other than to pass through on one motorcycle trip I took a dozen years ago. We are staying overnight here in Visalia because it was too damn far to drive from Nevada City to home, especially since we have to drop off Gary & Oswaldo in West Hollywood on our…
Today Kim and I with Gary & Oswaldo head south out of Oregon and into the gold rush area of California that lies to the north and east of Sacramento. Frank tells me that every Fourth Grader in California has to take an obligatory show & tell trip into the gold rush area to see where the state got its origins and a lot more. Statehood came to California in 1850 as a direct result…
American Meadows is my wildflower seed purveyor of choice. They are a company that is located in Shelburne, Vermont on the banks of Lake Champlain and they have become a dominant purveyor of wildflower seeds in the country. Now let’s get serious here, among seed companies, Bayer (as in the aspirin people that bought Monsanto a few years ago) is still the 800 pound gorilla of seeds, but that is mostly general seeds for commercial…
I was just spent my first night in Portland, Oregon, the city that has a distinct reputation for being a liberal enclave and being the place where a lot of Black Lives Matter riots occurred after the George Floyd incident. I’m sure the Portland natives wouldn’t like the place that Portland occupies in my mind even though I am a liberal guy. I’m also sure that there is a lot more to Portland than one…
We thought our ride through Northern California along the coast and into Oregon would be an easy driving day. We failed to figure in the road renovation delays…and they were all over the place today. I’ve done this drive before, but I’d forgotten just how much primeval forrest we had to traverse and the delays this time over the rivers and through the woods were epic. Our first big stop after Ft. Bragg was Arcata,…