Life in Reverse My friend Tom is on the road north and will, within a month or so, land back at his starting place in Australia. He is the son of two Czechoslovak parents who left the country as the Communists took over with Soviet assistance in 1948. They left with their two young sons via Italy and eventually landed in Perth, Australia in a refugee camp. It was there that Tom was born into…
Turning Thirty Today is my youngest son’s birthday. He was born in 1995, so he is technically turning twenty nine today, but as we all know, that means he is starting his thirtieth year. I don’t know how much of a milestone that feels like to him, but it feels a bit like a milestone to me. Thomas was born in the middle of the decade of endless possibilities to me. I started the Nineties…
Death on the Hilltop No, no one has died…yet. Last night I got a strange email from someone I didn’t know. It began, “I haven’t met you yet, but I have been living in the neighborhood since 2013.” It was from a woman who claimed to be in our neighborhood and who was forwarding an email that had been sent a few weeks ago by her husband. It went on to say, “My husband realized…
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…