Western Dreams Like many men my age, I grew up during the cowboy era with the likes of The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Have Gun will Travel, The Rifleman, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Rawhide, Zorro, Maverick, Wagon Train, The Virginian, and even F Troop. If we had dreams in those heady days of the 50s and 60s, they were about being either astronauts or cowboys. I didn’t really think too much about either in a vocational…
Kim’s Big Week Every once in a while I can’t help myself and I must write a story about my lovely Kim, the love of my life. Kim and I met in the summer of 2005. I was six months out of a three year relationship following my second marriage and only days since breaking it off with a woman I had met on match.com. I also met Kim on match.com under circumstances that always…
The Passage of Time Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door,…
April Panorama It’s hard to keep a perspective on the weather when you live in a place like San Diego. We are in our fifth year of living full-time on this hilltop and I am generally pretty happy about the weather overall, but more confused than not, especially at this time of year, about what is normal, what is abnormal and what is shifting. I will define the normal/abnormal axis as the cyclical swings of…
The World According to Rich I just had an exchange with my red, but supposedly anti-Trump friend Kevin. This is that text group that I have been engaged with for several years that used to be two Florida residents (read that was them being red in political orientation) and one too blue Californian (blue ex-New Yorker…same thing). We added another friend from Arizona, Steve, who is appropriately purple, less by political leaning and more by…
Saving the Planet There are many big issues that can overwhelm us and make us small, insignificant and. Probably first among those issues, alongside world peace and the need for universal fairness and equality, is climate change. What used to be a hotly debated and very politicized issue has, through our day-to-day life experiences, particularly with the changing weather patterns, become more of a foregone conclusion. What we are left with is the big question…
Buddy Boy We have now had our little Buddy for three months, which means that he has settled into his new territory and made it his home. Both Kim and I have noticed that the blend of fun-loving pup and feisty devilish troublemaker has skewed decidedly towards the former. He still gets those orange/red eyes at times when his blood is up, but for the most part he is a happy and contented little dog.…
Returning to the Scene Life is short and memories are long. It’s been three years now since I had my big altercation with Cornell University over the house at 313 Warren Road. I long since moved my belongings out and handed over the property to the University. One of the things I took with me was the brass sign I had placed on a large rock at the entry. It had the address and the…
Reaping the Whirlwind Today we are heading towards Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city where Angkor Wat is located in the place where over 1 million people once lived 1,000 years ago. When moving from Vietnam to Cambodia, it’s hard not to think back to the history of these lands back when I was moving from school to Wall Street in the 70s. When I think of Cambodia, I think of three things, I think of…
The Heart of Darkness 125 years ago, William Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness about a voyage up the Congo River (not named, but assumed) to meet up with a trader, Kurtz, who had gone native. It is the story of colonial rule in the darkest sense. The story was adapted during the Vietnam War and made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola into the quintessential war movie called Apocalypse Now. What made these…