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…
When I’m 64 Today is Kim’s birthday, and yes, she turns 64 years old. So, naturally, the Beatles 1967 song from The Yellow Submarine album comes to mind. That song was written by John Lennon, who would be 82 this year and Paul McCartney, who is 80 years old this year. I am four years past that milestone birthday and that would hardly qualify as a milestone were it not for this very song. The…
Dismantling a Heritage When people ask me where I am from, my answer depends on the context of that particular exchange. If I am sitting having a long conversation with someone, I explain that I grew up all over the world and that there are parts of me that started in Venezuela and Costa Rica, wound their way through all of the major parts of the United States from California to the Midwest to the…
Paging Doctor Cohen with an Assist by Cliff Davis We are spending the weekend at Camp Davis on Lake Ariel in the Poconos, the lovely vacation home of our dear friends Cliff and Linda. I met Cliff and Linda fifty-one years ago on the second floor of University Halls Dormitory number Four (called U-Hall 4 by its denizens). The greatest difference between this U-Hall and the other five identical cinderblock post-WWII buildings was that unlike…
Father’s Day Technically and even though it has been celebrated in other forms since the Middle Ages, Father’s Day was first celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June in 1910. At 112 years old, the celebratory day still remains three years behind the recognition of Mother’s Day, which began in 1907. But officially, it wasn’t really nationally established until 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson made an official proclamation as to its…
The Day Before the Day Today is a perfect San Diego June day. The sun rose at 5:38am and there was no June Gloom marine layer of mist or fog. The high is projected to be 75 degrees with a humidity level of 50%. By the time the sun sets at 8pm, making today the longest daylight day of the San Diego year, we will be ready for our roadtrip. Technically, the longest day should…
Eyelids of Morning I am feeling tired this morning. My CPAP tells me I slept 6 hours and 39 minutes last night, which excludes the half hour I was awake at 3am, taking some Tylenol for my aching shoulder and reading a few emails. At that time of day there are usually only junk spam emails and one important email with Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American, her daily recap of how the events…
Downhill Racer Last night I made Kim watch A History of Violence, the 2005 film directed by David Cronenberg and staring Vigo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. While Cronenberg leans more to the macabre and gory than I generally prefer, I have always like Vigo and there is always something appealing about the guy who wants to be at peace but gets dragged back into his violent past by circumstance (John Wick,…