In 1995, at my 20th college reunion, I was nominated to be our Class of ‘75 Class President. I recall that I agreed to take on the role for the five year term from some combination of pressure from the outgoing president and the University development office. That’s not such a leverage point to be sure, but it seemed to me that the run-up to the 25th reunion might make it a more interesting moment…
In advance of our trip to Patagonia in 45 days, and at the request of my friend Faraj, who will be going with us, I have put together a series of 22 films about the region. These are movies about Chile, Patagonia, Argentina, Cape Horn and the Drake Passage as well as the Falkland Islands. I took the task seriously and tried to find an array of representative films that would capture what we were…
It is said that some of the greatest art comes from great pain. That may be so, but I guess I am lucky and simply don’t have so much pain in my life…at least not so far. I understand that this could change in a heartbeat, but unless and until it does, I create my art from whatever place of joy inhabits me at the moment. A few days ago, while down on the back…
I pick titles to my stories in several ways. Sometimes I hear an interesting turn of phrase in a movie or on some TV news or read it in an article and it just resonates with me, so I write to capture what it invoked in me when I heard or read it. Sometimes I have a decided theme in mind and I search for a word to describe it and when I capture that,…
The Gaza Strip is a 140 square mile territory along the Mediterranean coast, bordered by Israel and Egypt. Its history stretches back thousands of years as part of various empires and civilizations. In modern history, after World War I, Gaza was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered Gaza while absorbing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, a diaspora that has since spread throughout the Middle East and…
Today I went for a very eventful personal appointment. When I moved here in 2020, I went about getting a California drivers license, which was not an easy feat in the midst of COVID. I finally got an appointment in the Temecula office of California DMV (Kim had to go all the way to Hemet to get her’s) once the DMV felt it was safe to reopen their offices to the public and re-expose their…
We are now just five days from the Trump inauguration, so the last bits and pieces of the Biden administration are winding down and preparing for the orderly transition of power to the new Trump team. The confirmation process for his cabinet has begun with the open Senate confirmation hearings on Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense being held yesterday. Full and complete partisanship was on display and much of the Hegseth dirty linen was…
Planning out the deconstruction of the Holidays is always an activity that defines the most fundamental of differences in people. I am a planner by nature and, of course, others are not. I am also a person of great focus, which is particularly necessary and valuable if you are also, as I am, a person who has many varied interests and preoccupations. As soon as the Holidays have passed their peak, I start thinking about…
We are closing in on a full week of being on tenterhooks. The phrase means to be in a state of anxiety, suspense, or painful anticipation. The expression comes from a very practical origin in the textile industry: A tenter was a wooden frame used to stretch woolen cloth after washing, preventing it from shrinking as it dried. The cloth would be attached to the frame using metal hooks (tenterhooks) to hold it taut. This…
Last night we rewatched a 2024 movie that we had seen, but which must not have left much of an impression on me since I was intrigued by the snippet of Prime that advertised it. The movie is called Lonely Planet and its about some people that go off to a writer’s retreat in Morocco. One of the attendees is Liam Hemsworth, younger brother of actor Chris. He is not a writer, but rather a…