Checking Out I just read that a successful real estate development executive who lived in Los Angeles and was 66 years old (that would be a few years younger than me) came to the decision that life was no longer worth living, and he chose to voluntarily check out. The reason I was reading about it as a news item was not because it is an isolated incident or that suicide in today’s society is…
Rise and Shine For some strange reason, I have always liked post-apocalyptic movies. That surprises me since I consider myself such an optimistic person. I am also, quite decidedly, an early morning person, which implies that the morning after should be my best moments and not filled with dread. But an apocalypse and any inevitability associated with it cannot be considered anything other than a pessimistic outlook. I suppose you could argue that surviving an…
A Prelude to War Frank Capra won an Academy Award in 1942 for his production of his Office of War Information documentary. It was used first to pump up the soldiers in the armed forces that were heading into the war effort after the attack at Pearl Harbor. And then it was shown widely to the American people so as to get everyone on the same page about exactly why we as Americans were doing…
Seeing Beauty I like living in California. There are many reasons for that, not the least of which is that I like the politics of the state, which, while it has its fair share of less than liberal areas, is, for the most part, very liberal. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to live in a state that wants to suppress voting or is prepared to mandate things like abortion denial, not only…
Buen Camino We are in Palacio Carmen in Santiago de Compostela, the end of The Way of St. James or, as it is more commonly called, the Camino de Santiago. The Way gathers from all over Europe , wherever pilgrims start their trek. To get an official stamp and certificate you have to walk at least 100 km of the Camino or, if you are on a bicycle, at least 200 km. Based on that,…
It’s All About Soul This morning we are leaving Bilbao, where we have spent two nights and we are headed west along the coast of Spain going first to a Medieval town of Santillana de Mar, just beyond Santander. It’s a quaint little cobblestoned village with shops and restaurants (one quaint one which we chose to stop in for lunch). We were supposed to overnight there but had to change our route to go further…
World War III When I travel outside the United States, I find myself watching a lot of CNN International. This isn’t necessarily an intentional increased globalization of my perspective, but rather a function of what hotel cable news tends to be available. At home my go-to provider has, as I’m sure most of my readers have guessed, become MSNBC. With the loss over the past year of Brian Williams, that controversial but very tongue-in-cheek anchor…
Moving to Patagonia No, I am not leaving my hilltop. I have determined that I am not ever leaving our hilltop unless and until they carry me out. And no, this is not necessarily about our next trip to the Southern Cone of South America where the countries of Argentina and Chile merge through the Andes Mountains down to the tip of Tierra del Fuego (the land of fire), the archipelago that forms at the…
One Not-So-Angry Man With a Metascore of 96, one of the top ten movies (number five to be exact on the IMDb listings of all-time greats) is Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, about a jury sequestered in a murder case. The story revolves around twelve men on the jury, already a gender-biased and racially-biased statement about the changing times, since this movie’s 1957 release. These are literally twelve white men, serving on a NYC criminal…
Of Fathers and Sons My daughter, Carolyn, has her mother/daughter posse that she always wanted. I’m very happy to see her so happy as a mother, but especially as a mother of two lovely daughters. Based on her blonde/blue-eyed genetics combined with her husband, John’s Norwegian heritage, this has caused her to have two blonde/blue-eyed beauties that share a bedroom and are the best and closest of sisters. Carolyn is an energetic mother (she is…