Forced to Fly I find myself in a most unusual place. Two years ago, when planning a motorcycle ride to Spain, I had the brilliant idea of buying business class seats through a specialized third-party vendor who promoted being able to offer business and first class seats far cheaper than otherwise available. That was appealing to me because when we fly internationally, we pretty much insist on going business class (our size being a significant…
McDonalds On My Mind For ten years I taught at Cornell on Monday evenings, ending at 7pm and then getting in my car for a four hour drive back to NYC. I have a house in Ithaca, so I’m still not sure why I did it that way, but I did and it lasted ten years with very few exceptions. Part of the routine was to stop at the East Hill Plaza, which was on…
In the Land of Nod Somewhere along the way in my education, I always thought of the Land of Nod as being in the state of sleep and drowsiness, referring to that haziness that occurs when we traverse the land of wakefulness into deep sleep. The reference seemed onomatopoetically appropriate since it envisioned someone’s head nodding off into slumber, but just barely such that there was still borderline consciousness. It is in that moment when…
A Confederacy of Southerners This is a party weekend at Casa Moonstruck. Kim’s nephew Will is marrying Ashley in early October. They got engaged on our family trip to Ireland two years ago on a lonely beach on the Ring of Kerry. It was cause for celebration since Will is a sweet guy and Ashley is someone the whole family likes and feels is a fine match for Will. WIll is 42 and Ashley is…
Juggling Being a Baby Boomer, I generally have a confusion (not so much a barrier as true confusion) over gender fluidity. I identify as him/he if I must declare, but I have yet to include that on any proper titling or letterhead the way it is becoming standard for people in the groove of modernity. My youngest son is producing a short play that is entirely about a very gender fluid situation with a gender-bimodal…
Into the Wild No, this story is not going to be about Chris McCandless sitting on top of an old bus at the base of Denali waiting to die of hunger. Emile Hirsch played that role well in 2007 and Sean Penn directed it like he himself saw that there was no tomorrow. That story was about a privileged kid who wanted to test himself to the limit and took a journey of enlightenment that…
On Becoming an Elephant When it rains it pours. We’ve all heard that many times in our lives. What hasn’t been so well acknowledged is that when it does rain and therefore does pour, it does so even harder when you have planned a parade or a picnic. My retirement has been in process for twenty months now and the four primary activities I brought to the table to give me at least transitional purpose…
The Dagwood Effect The other day we were going to dinner in Escondido with Winston and Kathleen. Winston is such a great name, for a neighbor especially, since it evokes a person of interest that is both conservative and yet mildly daring at the same time. That description fits our Winston quite well, but more on that later. We drove down to the local Mexican restaurant (there are so very many in the area) that…
Stupid is as Stupid Does In 2020 we were scheduled to go to Spain and Portugal (Barcelona to Porto) for a motorcycle trip in August. Needless to say, by the middle of Spring everyone was unequivocally concerned enough about COVID to unanimously recognize the wisdom of cancelling the trip. We even went so far as to assuage our troubled motorcycling souls by tentatively planning a “post-Pandemic” trip in February to Patagonia. By the time the…
My Worst Nightmare This morning I decided to go to the Market, our local deli, to get a breakfast burrito to share with Candice and an Asahi Bowl for Kim. When I walked in I immediately saw the glass case with the fresh donuts. There was only one person in front of me in line and I stood my respectful six feet away from him while the counter girl finished her tasks and turned to…