The Limits of Friendship Most of my friends know that I write. This is especially the case with my long-time friends from my motorcycle group, The American Flyers Motorcycle Club (AFMC). I started twenty-six years ago writing a trip story and have done one for every ride I have taken since. People love to read about some story they are a party to, so the stories get lots of kudos. I also think that over…
Choosing Life It has occurred to me that while I very often write about the hottest political topics of the moment, I have gone the better part of a week since the abortion topic hit our headlines in such a stark manner as it has, and I have not yet chosen to write on that topic. It is a hard topic to address, not because my views are conflicted, but because there is almost no…
Jettisoning Junk This summer when I travel to the old homestead in Ithaca, which I even call Homeward Bound, I will take on the task of depersonalizing the house of all the memorabilia that I will want to keep once the University takes over the house for good at the end of the year. Several people have called this the end of an era and they are not wrong in characterizing it as such, but…
The Art of Peace There are so many places one can take the subject of peace. It is perhaps one of the universal desires of mankind no matter what word is used to describe it, and yet it is certainly the most illusive of goals mankind has ever faced. I think it is fair to suggest that primordial man might know it when he saw it, but probably was not so presumptuous as to ever…
Faith I am rewatching the Netflix series The Crown and finding it great entertainment and chock full of thoughtful issues worthy of contemplation. That is the sign of well-produced, directed and acted movie or series. Being thought-provoking is something I very much value in my movie and TV viewing. It seems somehow easier to do be thought-provoking in a written piece and easier to be entertaining in a visual piece, but the ability to enroll…
Repeating Twenty-five years ago I was attending a function at Cornell University when I met a pleasant young woman by the name of Nancy. She introduced herself as the wife of my cousin Pete. My mother had three brothers and two sisters while she grew up in the town of Lansing in the Finger Lakes area of New York State. One sister died in childhood during a raging flood. One brother and the other sister…
Living Alone I returned home from a few weeks away yesterday. I had traveled from Rome to Munich to Newark, stayed two nights in Manhattan and flown home from JFK direct to San Diego. It is always a long ride back and forth from San Diego to Europe, but we make a point of using it to stop in NYC to see the kids whenever we can. This time I came home by myself since…
Wandering Through Grace When I start a new story like this, I pluck a recent story from the recently saved ones and use its format to delete the story and replace the title. That saves me from having to choose a font and font size and get the alignment right. Today, the old story I plucked from the array was When Will You Make an End, which was about my Hobbit House, but starts off…
7,700 Steps Through Heaven Today we are in Rome with just a loose agenda of activities. We drove in yesterday from Amalfi and I dropped off the rental car at Stazione Termini while the gang found their way with the luggage to the AirBnB we had secured. The place is called The Spanish Penthouse in honor of the fact that it is at the base of Piazza de Spagna and is, indeed on the top…
Moonstruck Shire I have been asked by a loyal reader to break my policy of not publishing photos, so as a one-time exception, I am going to publish pictures of the completed Hobbit House you have been reading about. My daughter Carolyn suggested a build something like this for my granddaughters, my sister Kathy gave me a sign naming it Moonstruck Shire, my son Thomas helped me seal and waterproof the roof, my son Roger…