A Bright New Day Today is the first real post heat wave day on the hilltop. It is 63 degrees outside and should reach up to about 80 during the day. I just spoke to Joventino the gardener (in Spanish as usual) and he seemed genuinely happy for the heat to have passed. You see Joventino works at least six days a week for at least 10 hours a day in the outdoors. I’m sure…
Back in the Oven We are currently experiencing a late season heat wave. The Excessive Heat Warning sign is posted and it looks as though today is the first of what is expected to be a four-day streak where this hilltop high temperature is expected to exceed 100 degrees. It says it’s 101 right now. Someone finally published a temperature map that seems to confirm what I have always known since moving out here. On…
Beautiful Several years ago, Kim took me to see Beautiful, the Broadway show about the music, life and times of Carole King (a.k.a. Carol Joan Klein). The other night, Kim bought tickets to see a production of the same show at something called the Moonlight Amphitheater in nearby Vista. To begin with, I must say that the Moonlight is a lovely venue that we are very lucky to have so nearby. It’s a great spot…
The Way We Were The 1973 film by that name starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand was impactful to me for many reasons. To begin with, the author of the script and the book on which the movie is based, Arthur Laurents, was a Cornell University graduate who was a contemporary of my mother. He was born about 10 months after my mother, so he was probably not Class of 1937, but he wrote his…
Hope Is Making a Comeback They say that the best political campaigns are those that appeal to change for the future. While people are generally fearful of change, they also want it because it gives them something to look forward to and few of us are ever totally content with the status quo. Normal modeling would suggest that there should be 20% of the population that likes what it has and is more worried about…
Babysitting Buddy After a weeklong roadtrip with Buddy having to board with a bunch of other pups and not getting his regular due of play and attention, we prefer to keep him at home for a while rather than taking the more convenient path of putting him right back into day care. We are pretty sure that he doesn’t mind day care, but we are also pretty sure that he prefers being at home. I…
The Vortex There are certain places in our lives, which we pass through regularly and which have special meaning to us. For me, one such place is the area between Las Vegas and Torrey, Utah. The highlights of that region go from Mesquite Nevada to the Virgin Valley Gorge, which is actually a part of Arizona, St. George, Utah, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks and the entire area surrounding Torrey, with…
The Great Divide I have been fascinated by the idea that there is a line one can draw down the continent that demarcates what is known as the hydrological divide of the Americas. That means simply that to the east of that line all the water flows east and to the west of it, all the water flows west. This line extends all the way from the Bering Strait down to the Straits of Magellan.…
And Tango Makes Three This morning I heard a very heart-warming story on the radio. It’s the story of a book banning. Apparently, a few years ago at the Central Park Zoo, there were these two chinstrap penguins that got particularly friendly and started living together, making a nest together. Their names were Roy and Silo. There was nothing terribly unusual about that except that they were both males. The zookeepers saw no harm in…
Nature’s Clock There are certain aspects of nature that we all take for granted. We are all accustomed to the sun rising every day and setting at the end of that day. We have systematized the celestial processes so that we publish reports on when sunrise and sunset will occur. We do the same thing when it comes to the moon and the cycles of the moon and the tides along with it. Seasons are…