Captain Redux Not so long ago I wrote a piece called Captain America that was about my plans for an upcoming transcontinental ride this summer from Des Moines back to my hillside. Everything about that ride in terms of the reasons for doing it have changed as things do, so I am finding myself in change mode. The sequence went like this: first the testimony I was to give in Des Moines has been pushed…
Forgiveness One of my favorite movies that I happened on scanning Netflix tonight is the 2011 movie Warrior with Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte. The reason I am scanning Netflix is because Kim is off rehearsing with her Encore choral group for an early June concert, her first with Encore. Last night we watched three of the four second installments of the AppleTV series called WeCrashed about Adam and Rebekah Neumann, the founders…
Texas Chainsaw Massacre In 1974, almost fifty years ago, Leatherface burst onto the scene of the national pop consciousness as a cannibalistic mass murderer. Our culture loves a horror movie for reasons I can’t relate to (I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy any form of horror movie) and this particular horror franchise has spawned nine sequels, a video game and even comic books that have made somebody a lot of money off the…
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…