I am totally into my fitness program now and I’m really glad to say that none of it is linked to any New Year’s resolutions. In fact, the only New Year’s resolution that I made this year was not to make any New Year’s resolutions. My success rate with them in the past has been 0%, so I wanted to avoid confusing myself and my intentions with some flaky cultural norm of thinking that starting…
We all understand that while the Christmas tradition of gift-giving is most closely linked to the legend of Santa Claus, the origin of the story dates back to St. Nicholas of Myra, a Christian bishop in Myra (modern-day Turkey). A few years ago, on our motorcycle trip through Turkey, we actually stopped in Myra and stood beneath his statue, so I can say I’ve been to the real North Pole. St. Nicholas was known for…
My experience with sushi dates back to 1976 on my first day of work in the New York City banking world. I don’t think I had ever really even heard of sushi before then. I started work at Bankers Trust Company on Monday, June 28, 1976. I had secured a spot as a Cornell MBA graduate in their bank training program and was being paid the princely sum of $17,000 per year. That had afforded…
When I awoke to the news alert from the Financial Times that President Trump had announced a U.S. invasion of Venezuela resulting in the capture, seizure and removal of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, presumably to some U.S.-controlled location, I was not totally surprised. I then watched this morning as Trump and Secretary of “War” Hegseth, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio standing behind nodding, spoke about the unprecedented aggressive military action. Something Hegseth…
There is something about these years when Christmas and New Years fall in the middle of the week (this year it was Thursday) that make the holidays feel like they are somewhat extended. I don’t want to sound like the Grinch, but they seem to be dragging on. Truth be told, our relatives (other than son Tom) left quite briskly on the 26th and Tom did his usual departure on New Years Eve, all of…
It’s January 1 and the deluge has descended on the hilltop. We have a flat roof, so when it rains hard we really hear and feel it and it certainly has been raging hard this morning. There is a sort of end-of-the-world element to this morning’s rain since we cannot see even to the edges of our property with the heavy fog that is enveloping us. Last night at a simple and early gathering at…
For the second day in a row, I find myself sittting here in the living room of our hilltop with the sun shining brightly on a crisp December morning and the air being so clear that the Pacific Ocean feels to be right at our feet to the west. Just over the rolling hills of Vista that sit between our hilltop and the coast, we can see a full 40 miles of deep blue ocean.…
Twelve Years a Slave refers to both a powerful historical memoir and its acclaimed film adaptation. The memoir itself was written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York, who was kidnapped in Washington D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spent 12 years enslaved on plantations before being rescued in 1853. His detailed firsthand account became one of the most important slave narratives, providing unprecedented insight into…
Back in the mid-1960s we were living in Maine while my mother set up and ran the first women’s Job Corps center at the old Poland Spring resort complex. It was quite a change of pace and place for us. Discounting my first 4-5 years as a blur of on and off images, I had spent my life in two places, a tropical valley in Costa Rica and then a grad student subsistence life in…
We recently lost Jeff Grogg to the universe. Jeff was a beloved husband to Lisa, a beloved brother to Kim and Sharon, a beloved uncle to Will, Josh and even a non-Grogg like my son Tom and also a feisty as shit brother-in-law to me. About 30 years ago I stood a few miles from here at Mission San Luis Rey giving my first eulogy. That was for my father and I learned an important…