Ring Theory As I sit here watching the sun rise, I am, for some reason, unable to stay in bed much past 6:00 – 6:30am. It does not seem very dependent on the time I fall asleep and yet we do everything we can to keep the bedroom darkened against the dawn. Because I sleep with a CPAP machine (something I have done for twenty-five years ostensibly due to snoring, but likely now to ward…
The Fairy Tree On our property out by the barbecue patio and hot tub there is a wonderful tree. It is a baobab or more commonly known as a Madagascar Bottle Tree. It is sometimes called an upside-down tree because of its unique shape. They are common to South Africa, Madagascar and Australia and they look pretty much like an Orangina bottle through the trunk, which in the case of our specimen planting is perhaps…
The Distant Peaks In my new office I have surrounded myself with things to make me feel good. That’s what we do in life, right? To my right is a NixPlay digital photo frame that shows a continuous array of pictures that my family can send in for my viewing pleasure. I can also download a bunch of travel snapshots and therefore I have my own little memory lane. This helps a lot with my…
Time in a Bottle The name of my blog, the Old Lone Ranger is taken from Jim Croce’s song, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, which was his third studio album, but his first real successful album. It spent 93 weeks on the charts and spanned the time before and after his tragic death in a small airplane crash. In fact, the album was ranked #1 on the charts for five weeks in early 1974…
The Snail’s Eye View It’s been unusually rainy here the last few weeks. I say that even though I have never been here for an extended period and certainly not at this time of year, but I think I’m on safe ground saying that. We have had a few days like yesterday when it rained cats and dogs as they say. It was a rain that would have made people in the tropics wonder what…
Holding Back the Rain We’ve begun watching a BBC series on Netflix called Call the Midwife, which is a period series set in the East End of London in the 1950’s, the decade of my own birth. It is the story of a young nurse, Jenny, who goes to work in the early days of the British National Health Service. She has trained as a nurse and midwife, but is sent into the bowels of…
Boy Interrupted If you saw the movie Girl Interrupted with Winona Ryder you will understand the concept I am going for here. In that movie, Winona spends eighteen months in a mental institution as she has shown an abject inability to cope with reality. There’s a bit of that starting to go around all over the place right now. I’m not sure its being deemed to be worthy of being committed, but there is certainly…
The Life of the Mind Today I had occasion to speak to a friend and colleague I worked with thirteen years ago and and saw probably five years ago. I have given him my blog address so, full disclosure, he may well be reading this just as you are reading this. Why do I mention that, because I am forever getting into hot water with people who share things with me and then find themselves…
Sucking the Marrow It’s late in the afternoon, but not so late that the sun is yet setting. My day starts early out here in San Diego. That is especially so on Tuesdays because Wednesday may be Prince Spaghetti Day (for those of you who grew up in or near Lowell, Mass.), but Tuesday is CEO Management Day. It is the day we get everyone together to update ourselves on what everybody is doing to…
And They Called Him Pedro Blanco For the first time since its founding in the days of John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps has recalled some 7,000 volunteers from around the world due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Think about that. Sixty years of global hostilities and scary events and it was this event which has caused a noble and stalwart body to send out an emergency message to all its field staff to leave where…