Touched by the Big Chill Yesterday was quite a day. I have written about our AC problems in this mid-August heat wave, a problem that got resolved with relative ease. I have also written about the events at Mart-A-Lago and the irony of all the informational overload we as Americans are being asked to take in about all the people from the right that are trying literally and figuratively to flush all evidence down the…
Saying Hello I’ve probably said this in so many ways that I’ve become quite predictable. I have a relatively easy time saying goodbye to places. That comes from my lifetime of moving, first as a trailing child and eventually as an adult with a roving eye and more than a modicum of wanderlust. But saying goodbye to places is always much easier than saying goodbye to people for sure. I’ve been pretty fortunate in my…
Rich in Real Life One of our favorite movies is the 2007 RomCom with Steve Carrel, Juliet Binoche, and Dane Cook called Dan in Real Life. It is directed by Peter Hedges, who is a bit of an obscure director who is perhaps better known as a writer of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio) and the screenplay for About a Boy, which is another favorite of mine. We are sitting around…
Speaking Frankly I have known Frank now for every bit of thirty years. We met by virtue of being next door to each other in condos in a small twelve-unit place called Ontario Lodge on the northern side of the main Deer Valley Mountain, looking down onto Guardsman’s Pass and the old silver mine that was the raison d’et for Park City’s existence. As was emblematic of the two of us, Frank had been there…
Let the Sun Shine In The day is getting off to a slow start ramping up to its anticipated mid-80s temperatures, but the sun is breaking through as the morning crests its half-way point. It’s a Saturday so the traffic patterns are not following the normal Cornell commutation cycle with cars and trucks heading down Warren Road into Forrest Home in the morning and flowing up and out of Forrest Home in the late afternoon.…
On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin! That is the beginning of the University of Wisconsin fight song. It carries on with “fight on for your fame”. I lived in Wisconsin from 1961 to 1965 and pretty much spent my grade school years at the Spring Harbor Elementary School on the southern shore of Lake Mendota, which, along with Lake Monona, bound the capital city of Madison, where the central University of Wisconsin campus sits. This state took…
A Trip to the Shore From my hilltop I can see forty miles of Pacific Ocean. That shoreline from Oceanside down to San Diego or even from Oceanside north along Camp Pendleton to Dana Point is arguably some of the nicest stretches of beach in the world. There is something about the beach in Southern California that is integral to the way of life. For us, while we occasionally take a ride over to the…
Summertime and the Living is Breezy It’s been an unusually nice summer weather pattern here in Ithaca the past fortnight. Some days get up into the 80’s and feel a bit hot in the afternoon, but most days have been in the mid 70s and start and end cool. Yesterday, my big event for the day was to be a barbecue in the early evening with several friends from my University involvement days. The granddaughters…
Cold and Rainy I spent my entire adult life living in the Northeastern United States, most of it in the Metro New York area, but also up here in Ithaca. Using Ithaca for this math, the average annual rainfall is 37.4 inches, with snowfall of 63.3 inches, resulting in 159.3 days with precipitation, leaving 155 sunny days. That compares to Escondido, which only gets 15.2 inches of rain (no snow) on 41.6 rainy days and…
The Immutable Power of Nature I have pontificated on many subjects here and in general. Pondering the great truths of life is something I am prone to doing more and more the older I get. I think in some ways that is very natural, but in other ways I have an unnatural need to declare these great truths, not so much because I don’t think others have thought them before me, but rather because I…