Mud-puddle has always been a word or word contraction that I have always liked for some reason. It was the great novelist Sinclair Lewis, America’s first Nobel Laureate for literature as well as Pulitzer Prize writer, who won those accolades “for his vigorous and graphic art of description” when he described in his first and most famous novel, Main Street, the confines of small town American life, with its “mud–puddles and ragged weeds by the…
I surrender. I’ve tried for five years now and done everything I can to professionalize myself with regard to this task. I’ve bought the finest Italian-made tools. I’ve tried using every imaginable resource to improve my capabilities. I’ve broken the task down so that I space out my efforts and not grow weary. But I’m here to tell you after this latest bout of effort that I simply cannot clean windows well enough to justify…
I know few people stronger than Joventino. If you subscribe to Instagram as I do (I am a passive watcher, not a contributor), you may have seen the short videos of the humble and modest-looking gym janitor who comes up to the beefcakes pumping the big iron. He usually acts like he just needs to clean around the equipment, but then asks if he can try lifting the monster weights they are deadlifting. They kinda…
The tradition of Halloween seems to stem mostly from Celtic sources that celebrated the remembrance of the dead and martyred, specifically those that are cast into the Christian realm of purgatory where those souls who have died in a state of grace are further cleansed before their ascension into heaven. I guess I had always thought of purgatory as a bad and restless place that you went to if you were not worthy, but it…
I remain a faithful reader of Letters From An American, a daily newsletter from American History Professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson (HCR). Since she publishes most often at night East Coast time (she lives in Maine), I mostly read her when I wake up at night and need some soothing before going back to bed. HCR blends an historical context with her reporting of the political machinations of the day. She has published…
Yesterday I took delivery of a large non-fruit-bearing olive tree in a 48” square root box. It is sitting on my upper driveway, having been delivered by my friends at Javier Nursery. I used to say that Moon Valley Nurseries, the land of the fully planted multi-thousand dollar trees, was the only place that had good tree stock from which to choose, but I have changed my mind. My buddy Mike used to recommend Briggs…
in the last few years when we’ve traveled overseas, we’ve gone with our neighbors, Mike and Melisa. We went to Egypt and Jordan with him and we went to Southeast Asia with him early next year. We will go to the far southern reaches of South America with them (this time on a cruise). The common thread of our travel adventures has been that we have gone to reasonably exotic places with the exception of…
There are many days when I find myself marveling about the world we live in and how much better it is now than when I was young. I find it funny that there are some people around that bemoan the loss of this or that and make a big deal about wanting things to go back to the way they were. I don’t mind a little wistfulness, but let’s face the facts that many of…
I love the internet for many reasons. Obviously I like the entertainment value via streaming. I, like a larger and larger segment of the population, am out of the cable TV and satellite TV business and just care about broadband internet access via WiFi. When we travel anywhere I have no idea why they even bother with channel delivery choices on room TV’s. They are just too hard to figure out from one hotel to…
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…