What’s Up Tiger Lily? Kim is not a fan of Woody Allen. That is mostly a position she has taken due to his personal life choices, like marrying his wife’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi. One might think she would get over it as Woody and Soon-Yi have now been married for over 30 years, but I guess once a child molester to her, always a child molester. I, on the other hand, always think of Woody…
Why Don’t He Write? We started learning to write to family and friends when we went off to summer camp. I went to summer camp, and probably did write letters home, but at age eight, I went off for the summer to California (we were living in Wisconsin at the time) to meet and spend some time with my father. I still have a copy of the letter I wrote to my mother that summer…
Burn, Baby, Burn Like every other homeowner in the western United States, I am going through a crisis of homeowner’s insurance. I know I am not alone and, in fact, the rising tide of catastrophic losses from natural disasters combined with the escalation in the value of homes and the replacement cost of homes have all contributed to a steep rise in the cost of homeowner protection insurance. I often quote my friend Joe, who…
Zoo To You Too San Diego is nothing if not a Zoo town. We actually have what I would call two zoos here. They are both part of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the one is the world famous Zoo near Balboa Park in the middle of the city. The other is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and it is very near where we live in Escondido. The main Zoo is 100…
Being Predictable On Sunday we went to the San Diego County Fair, ostensibly to watch Kim perform with her vocal group, but really because who doesn’t like an old fashioned county fair? I was not part of the 4H crowd like my friend Frank. He was a real farm boy who drove tractors and kept chickens to sell the eggs. For him, going to the county fair was like the culmination of all the hard…
Things I Do Not Understand I know that most of you are thinking this is going to be an extraordinarily long story given the title, but I will try to keep it down to my usual size and declare right up front that this is not intended to be a comprehensive list of things I do not understand, but just the ones that are on my mind today. We are on our last day at…
The Heat is On Here in Virginia Beach, it is 86 degrees with 76% humidity, which my weather app says makes it feel like 98 degrees. If you asked anyone in our party, especially those who wandered through the USS Wisconsin, going four decks below the water line into the bowels of this steel battleship, they would add about another 15 degrees to that. I checked our hilltop and see that it is 84 degrees…
And Then It Was Summer I have always liked the weather here in San Diego. What’s not to like, right? Well, that may be even more so now in the era a Climate Change. As I watch the news of heat domes and derechos, tornados and tsunamis, early hurricane seasons and rising coastal surges, I am liking my hilltop more and more. While we have lived here (basically 5 years now), we have never had…
The Popeye in Me Why the hell did Popeye ever become so famous? Why did the depression era audiences of the comic strips of King Features become so drawn to a one-eyed sailor during the interregnum of two world wars? I have a far easier time grasping the appeal of Bettle Bailey or Blondie, the other King Features favorites, than I do Popeye. He seems, with his Steamboat Willy-like ensemble of Brutus, Wimpy and Olive…
Digital Anthropology It used to be that our attics or basements or garages were the places where we piled up the junk that we couldn’t part with but yet knew that we would sooner or later throw out. Plenty of that still goes on, but several phenomenon of modern life have given us respite from having to face our inner hoarders in a self-deprecating manner every day. The most obvious of these litter the roadsides…