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…
Of Mice and Men Tonight we are watching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men that was made in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Steinbeck wrote this novella (only 107 pages) in 1937 while he was gathering and creating his stories of the Great Depression and the travails of the Dust Bowl and all the soulful stories of real people caught in the backwash of a world gone sideways. Steinbeck was from Salinas, California,…
Sonny Boy My youngest son Thomas is coming for a week-long visit on Wednesday. He arrives at San Diego Airport right in the middle of my Ethics class lecture (assuming his flight is on-time). Since the following week is Spring Break and since I do not want to keep my boy waiting too long at the airport (even though it is only a ten minute drive from the campus), I will probably end the class…