Gardening at the Edge Living on the edge is one of those claims that I enjoy making about my lifestyle. I have always liked the unorthodox life history that I have led and while the first seventeen years of my life I must attribute it to my mother and her wanderlust and adventurous lifestyle, I took only an educational breather for five years (BA and MBA) before reinventing my own personal version of that life…
Teaching in the Modern World In my backyard at my Ithaca house, the house I call Homeward Bound because it adjoins the Cornell University campus where my mother, all of my children and I all attended, there sits a wonderful rock and copper life-sized statue of a reclining Socrates, decked out in full toga, teaching his students most emphatically with hand gestures and such. This always struck me as the epitome of the Socratic Method…
They Call Me Benito If you are like me, there is only one person you associate with the name Benito and that name rhymes with Linguini. That particular Benito led the first fascist coup in 1922 that turned Italy to National Fascism and then spurred on his brethren like Adolph and Francisco to drive their own people into a lather over the next fifteen years. Il Duce, Das Fuhrer, El Caudillo all mean the same…
The Unfriendly Skies On Sunday I took a motorcycle ride to the East, up from Castle Creek through the small canyon into Valley Center and the Rincon Indian Reservation to the base of Palomar Mountain. It was a near perfect day with sunshine and blue skies and a temperature just barely tipping into the 80’s. This is always one of my go-to rides that makes me feel free and wonderful. I had picked up Jeff…
Out of the Fog The last few days have been foggy on this little hilltop, I like fog in the morning, it gives me the sense that there is less to worry about with my plants that I want to thrive. Out here, the sun beats so relentlessly down most of the day that I like to make sure everything has sufficient water to make it through the day. When it is foggy in the…
Zoomsday When I was preparing to move out here to San Diego, I wondered a lot about what I would be doing to fill my days. I was technically coming out here with a job, but it was a deferred salary job that may or may not have lasted very long. I had been retained by one client for expert witness services through the team with which I had enlisted, but had no idea whether…
Getting Ready for the Big One After battling the war of the worlds of ants this summer, the weather seems to have broken to a more pleasant temperature zone with the lows overnight in the low 50’s and the highs reaching up to the low 80’s. That is now my kind of weather for a number of reasons. It used to be an issue of pure bodily comfort, but now I recognize it as an…
Wearing Our Underwear on the Outside Woody Allen’s fifth movie was made in 1971, the year I graduated from high school, left Rome to work at Case Western Reserve University for the summer and eventually wound up bumming a ride to Ithaca to start Cornell fifty years ago. Can you name Woody’s first four movies? His first three (What’s Up Pussycat?, What’s Up Tiger Lily? and Casino Royale) didn’t really star Woody, but as the…
Busy Day I have three major work activities that occupy my days…except when they don’t. I have some days when nothing at all is going on. But then there are days like today that make up for all that free time. Today I started my day with a two hour conference call with my European (Sicily and Lisbon) expert witness partners. We went over my final response to a rebuttal of my rebuttal on a…
Long Way Up Ten years ago Kim gave me a Christmas gift of the DVDs of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding their BMW GSAs around the world. First there was Long Way Round (2004), taking the Silk Road from Europe through the Far East, and then there was Long Way Down (2007), from the Highlands of Scotland to the tip of South Africa. I am a motorcycle aficionado to the max and I like…