The Blue Origin of Life This morning I am reading articles that are making me simply pop with enthusiasm to write stories. Thus is the burden of a fertile and inquisitive mind since we are destined to depart on our cross-country road trip as soon as Kim finished her ablutions. It was a strange last night at home since Betty Poop has a case of explosive diarrhea which seems to have been brought on by…
Party Time I am sitting here at party-central this weekend. It’s almost 2pm and we have an open house from 3-6pm where we are expecting 40-50 people in total. Yesterday we had about thirty people for brother-in-law Bennett’s 70th birthday party. Yesterday was a fully catered party with what had to be the most California healthy menu I’ve ever seen. They called it a “Mediterranean Menu”, so I will know now what that means, lots…
The Girls at the Beach The other day Kim asked me if I thought my sisters would like to have a copy of a picture she found of the two of them in our mother’s hands, standing at the beach. Out mother had her hair being whipped about by the coastal breeze and the girls looked somewhat less than as exuberant as her. Kathy, the eldest, with her dark pixie haircut was looking up at…
The Silver Lining Script I am going to declare right up-front that I have “borrowed” this title from a combination of two sources. There is the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook from David O. Russell, staring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. That told the story of a slightly mentally ill man who moves home with his parents and tries to get over a bad marriage by entering a dance competition with a…
Hilltop Still-life I have started to pack for our trip East next week. Truth be told, I already sent a box of clothes to Ithaca so that we don’t have to lug so much back and forth in the car. God knows, I have enough summer clothes out here since it is summer all year long as I see it. Putting a week’s worth of roadtrip clothes in a leather satchel took all of ten…
Calling in the Cavalry When I decided to move out here to San Diego about two years ago, I spoke with Kim and we decided to just put a stake in the ground. I said we should move out at the end of 2019, which meant we should extend our lease on our apartment in New York for only eight months instead of twelve months. When I spoke to the rental company I expected some…
The Eclectic Home A few years ago we visited two homes on either coast of the country. One was the New York condominium apartment of a an old colleague and the other was a friend’s condo out here in the West. Both homes had something in common, they were as lovely and well-decorated as a model home on HGTV might be, but they both equally lacked any soul. They didn’t looked lived-in. Indeed, both were…
A Picture Worth a Thousand Memories I have had an active policy on this blog of NOT using photographs to compliment the stories. I have often written stories in which I embed photographs and made the stories look and feel like magazine articles. Some people ask for photos and I certainly understand the value of a visual aide, but I use this blog to force myself to write and write and write. As I formulated…
Always Be Closing The movie Glengarry Glen Ross is a classic and its probably the best sales movie ever made. Some throw that accolade to Boiler Room, The Pursuit of Happyness or The Wolf of Wall Street. Others think about non-financial selling like fracking contracts in Promised Land, aluminum siding in Tin Men (my choice for runner-up sales movie),or the other classic “Everyman” salesman of Death of a Salesman. But the combination of the GGR…
The Entry as Space The analysis of space holds a special place in my education. The professor who taught my Freshman Writing Seminar in the Fall of 1971 was technically a professor of Art History. Every Freshman had to take writing seminars their first two semesters. The academic powers that be at Cornell in those days felt that writing skill was a necessary component of the education of all students, regardless of anticipated major and…