A Dental Damn OK, admit it, you just had to start reading this story with a title like that, didn’t you? Don’t worry, this story has nothing to do with the latex product sold by that similar name, though I bet a lot of you are as curious about the device as I am. I have no particular reason to be so curious, but its just one of those things that you hear about along…
Arbor Arboretum Arbutus Carborundum Trees are once again on my mind at the moment. In the same way that I felt compelled last year to hire a consulting horticulturalist to teach me what I didn’t know about gardening (his message can be distilled to two words – MORE MULCH), I have just hired and spent two hours with a consulting arborist. I found him much more professional and credible than the horticulturalist, though they did…
Captain Redux Not so long ago I wrote a piece called Captain America that was about my plans for an upcoming transcontinental ride this summer from Des Moines back to my hillside. Everything about that ride in terms of the reasons for doing it have changed as things do, so I am finding myself in change mode. The sequence went like this: first the testimony I was to give in Des Moines has been pushed…
A Fistfull of Vomit One of my personal quirks is that I have only very rarely thrown-up over my 68 years. I know this isn’t a particularly pleasant topic, but it is one of life’s little events that we almost all have to face every once in a while. For my part, I can recall facing that physical requirement once in the 60s, once in the 70s and again once in the 90s. The first…
The Danger Zone Yesterday was Memorial Day, the day when we are supposed to honor those Americans who have given their vitality and perhaps their very lives in defense of our country, in defense of democracy. It is a day I take quite seriously and I made that small gesture of flying the American flag out in front of the house, like I try to do every year. You see, I was too young for…
Totems My life is now all about one totem after another. We all know what a totem pole is, but I’m not sure many of us have stopped to wonder about the underlying reasons why native people display them. A totem is a cultural symbol that tells people who we are and what we respect. They are most often a natural object or an animal that is believed by someone to have spiritual significance. I…
Adieu ADU There are two subjects that I keep returning to consider like a bee drawn to a flower. The first is getting an RV and using it to travel around the country. I think that one may finally have been put to rest two years ago when we rented a Sprinter van and went up to Ojai for what was supposed to be three days and turned out to be only two. That is…
An Aging Buffalo I know I should call it a bison and I know that a buffalo is something mostly found in Africa and India and not on the Great Plains of America, but everyone calls it a buffalo, so I often fall back into calling my Bison Boulder a buffalo. The beast is now seventeen months old and has been seen by 90% of the people who I expect will see it, but I…
So Hard…and then, So Easy I have lately been reminded over and over again about how hard life can sometimes be. That is actually a silly thing to say or think in a world overwhelmed with so many devastating events every day. For the better part of four months now we have lived day-by-day with the Ukrainian situation, one day exposing more atrocities by the Russians in their quest for Putin’s world dominance play, than…
Tree Surgery I have always been a tree guy as long as I can remember. I have mentioned my favorite tree painting before. I bought it about twenty-five years ago at a Private Banking gathering I attended in Punta del Este. The way to create buzz and cause gatherings to happen in the high net worth banking business is to do the things that people of means like doing and then invite them to attend.…