An Ethical Don Quixote My connection to the University of San Diego is strong enough to cause me to travel forty miles back and forth twice a week this semester to get to my two classes. Those classes start at 7pm so I go a bit early and grab a bite before my two and three hour classes. Last semester I was in the habit of going to a noodle cafe near the University, but…
Mapping the Trip The future is coming up on us fast. I am feeling it in several important ways. The first place this is happening is with our travel plans. Next week we will be heading off to Spain to suit up for a motorcycle ride through the Pyrenees and along the northern coast of Spain along the popularly significant Camino de Santiago. That ride will start in Barcelona, go up into Andorra, wind its…
One Not-So-Angry Man With a Metascore of 96, one of the top ten movies (number five to be exact on the IMDb listings of all-time greats) is Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, about a jury sequestered in a murder case. The story revolves around twelve men on the jury, already a gender-biased and racially-biased statement about the changing times, since this movie’s 1957 release. These are literally twelve white men, serving on a NYC criminal…
Changing Your Stars One of my favorite movies is A Knight’s Tale, staring Heath Ledger. In it he plays William Thatcher, the son of a thatcher (as in, a maker of thatched roofs) who is told by his caring father to go forth and change his stars as he hands him over to a knight to apprentice the boy and give him opportunity he might not otherwise get in Cheapside, where he is from. I…
Of Fathers and Sons My daughter, Carolyn, has her mother/daughter posse that she always wanted. I’m very happy to see her so happy as a mother, but especially as a mother of two lovely daughters. Based on her blonde/blue-eyed genetics combined with her husband, John’s Norwegian heritage, this has caused her to have two blonde/blue-eyed beauties that share a bedroom and are the best and closest of sisters. Carolyn is an energetic mother (she is…
So, after my class Wednesday, the student who gave me the four “CBD Patches” corrected me and said that I had misunderstood and that they were, indeed THC Patches. Hmmmm….. That makes me need to stop and think about it before using the patches. I had a gathering with several neighbors last night and asked the question of them. Should that change my instinct to try to help my shoulder pain and sleep patterns by…
The Business of Teaching I just finished teaching my Law, Policy & Ethics course for two hours tonight in what felt like a 90 degree classroom (we are all asked to conserve energy during this heat wave). It wrung me out and felt like a hard day in the salt mine by the time I was done. There is nothing inherently hard about the course material or this particular class, since it was the introductory…
As Goes Chile, So Goes the World NOTE: The referendum mentioned below was REJECTED by 62% vote, so this traditionally conservative country will remain more conservative than the current administration thought it could achieve. What I admire about the democratic process seems to be in place as the leftist president said the following, ““Chileans’ decision demands our institutions and political leaders to work harder, with more dialogue, respect and care, until we reach a proposal…
Labor Day Labors We all carry our own burdens, whether we want to or not. One of mine appears to be that I think too much. Please don’t shut down and assume that I am being arrogant and suggesting that I am smarter than other people, because I am not. I know my IQ and have for many years and I know I have a modicum of intelligence, but that many of you out there…
A Failure to Communicate We all know the line from Cool Hand Luke when the warden or the southern chain gang colony, Strother Martin says in his slow and deliberate southern drawl to Paul Newman (Luke), George Kennedy (Dragline) and the rest of the inmates (which include such future cinematic greats as Dennis Hooper and Ralph Waite), “You see, what we have here is a failure to communicate…”. The emphasis is placed on the word…