The Agony and the Ecstasy of Amalfi Today we awake to the brilliant Mediterranean Sea laid out before our eyes from the terrace of our AirBnB high up on a cliff overlooking the coastline. We have found and rented a very reasonable and very pleasant two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a large terracotta terrace that looks like the perfect summertime place to while away the warm afternoons to the setting sun. Yesterday we spent the day…
Entering the Eternal City We are transiting through Munich at the moment, on our way to Rome, Fumicino Airport that sits between Rome and Ostia Antica. I have very specific memories of the Rome airport for a number of reasons. Back in high school we would fly in and out of Rome on TWA mostly, heading back to New York. It was around 1970 that Boeing introduced its new monster of the sky, the 747.…
The Glorious Mid-Century If you spend any time watching House Hunter shows on HGTV or DIY Network (aka Magnolia Network), you have watched people rave about mid-century this or mid-century that. It is not atypical that we look back at the past with rose-colored glasses. Every generation does it to some degree. The past always looks rosier, probably because we remember the good and forget the bad. There is also the reality that looking back…
Natasha When I was a kid watching cartoons as often as I could, one of my favorites was the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. As you may recall, there was an entire ensemble of characters that comprised the Show. Some of the characters had their own schtick, while others were part of the Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle drama. That drama, narrated like a tongue-in-cheek documentary with an Edward R. Murrow type of voice, seemed often…
Cut and Paste The expression of cut and paste has taken on a derogatory connotation. It implies a degree of laziness or casual composition. You cut and paste when you don’t want or need original thought. I think that is actually a very unfair characterization of what can be a true creative process. I write a lot. I write every day…usually several times a day. Sometimes I write stories for this blog. Sometimes I write…
Winstons I Have Known I don’t know nor have I known too many Winstons in my life. The name first came into recorded existence in 1880 and since then there have been over 27,000 males recorded with that name. In the most recent year on record, 2018, there were 787 male newborns named Winston in the United States. To put that into perspective, my name, Richard, during that same span of 1880-2018 had 2,574,832 male…
Sitting in the Garden I visited Green Thumb Nursery in San Marcos today. Green Thumb has suddenly become my go-to local nursery owing to the diversity of products that they offer. My usual favorite nursery is Waterwise Botanicals. They are a very serious nursery that only stocks drought-tolerant plants and a whole array of roses, which are decidedly not doubt-tolerant. In many ways they offer the best quality of a wide variety of plant matter…
The Real Reality TV Hero We all spent the better part of five years dealing with Donald J. Trump, who was, by any rational standards an abject failure as a real estate developer and general businessman. Those of us from New York City (I was there 1976 through 2019), and especially those of us who spent some of those years in the real estate development game, as I did between 2008 and 2017, were always…
Shielding Oneself Yesterday, I wandered over to the far north side of the back hillside, a place at have largely ignored for the past two months as I’ve focused all of my attention on the Hobbit House on the south side of the back hillside. I had seen that one of my metal agave sculptures had been upended by the strong winds we had had earlier in the week. I had also seen Joventino spending…
Oh, Amelia I have mentioned that National Geographic is one of my last vestigial magazine subscriptions. I don’t stack them side-by-side in yellow-spined glory on some dusty basement shelf, as I remember them from my youth. But I do let them linger on the bedside table, the office glass-top table and the bathroom magazine caddy well beyond their otherwise useful life. I actually do glance through and read parts of the hard glossy copy, but…