The Scale of Life Today is our last day in Moab with our AFMC buddies and we will likely take one last ride through the red rock bluffs and plateaus that surround this other-worldly place that we enjoy so much. As is often the case, the landscape around us barely changes from year to year, but the people of the group most certainly do. I think we are all supposed to change somewhat with time,…
On Sacred Ground When I owned a home in Park City (I actually owned five different homes in Park City over fifteen years), one of my favorite pieces of artwork was a print I bought by a well-known western artist names Bev Doolittle. One of her favorite techniques is to paint images with a double entendre. I had several of her prints, but the print I especially loved was called On Sacred Ground and it…
Dead Babies Can’t Take Care of Themselves Remember Alice Cooper? He/they was born in 1948 in Detroit to a typical post-war middle class American family as Vincent Damon Furnier. It was once his family moved to Arizona that he decided that rock n’roll was his future. He hit his shock rock stride in the late 60’s and early 70’s when he and his pals realized that there was more to rock n’roll than just music.…
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…