The Life I Choose and Live Some movies never get old, and that is the case with almost anything with Martin Sheen. I know I have spoken about his son Emilio Estevez’s great movie The Way about the Camino de Compostela. It resonates with me now more than usual because this month we were supposed to be flying off to Barcelona with my ragged band of motorcycle pals. We were planning to drive north through…
The March of the Ants When I was a kid I used to like ants. To be fair, I had lived in Venezuela for four years and then two years in Costa Rica. I think I may have mentioned the little tropical valley there several thousand times. What I may not have explained is that the thing that makes the tropics the tropics is that the daily weather works something like this; it starts off…
1917 For some reason, the past year has all been about the stuff of a century ago. To begin with, Peter Jackson had his project to take the 100 hours of old black & white film footage from the British Imperial War Museum and do his magic. He did more than the usual coloration of an old film. He did something magic to the old footage of stilted and surreal soldiers who suffered through the…
Feeling Weakness I have probably matched the The Equalizer and The Equalizer II each five or more times, but I cannot ever seem to pass it by when its on the cable listing, so I’m watching it again (the original) now. To begin with, like many people, I am a big fan of Denzel Washington. I like the fact that he does as good a job as a bad guy as he does as a…
On Your Mark We are lying in a comfortable king-size bed in the Edgewood Lodge on Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada. It is a full-service resort, which has all the trappings of a Four-Star resort. The gatehouse with guard, the valet parking only, the vaulted yet modern lobby that screams Lake Tahoe and the magnificent views from its lakeside perch. When we check in we get a cute silk gauze bag with hand sanitizer and…
Back to the Tahoe Again Tomorrow is the last day of our trip to Northern California and Oregon. If you look at the map, our route has taken us up along the coast from Sonoma all the way up the Oregon Coast to the southern border of Washington, just over the Columbia River. From there up the Columbia most of the length of the Columbia River Gorge and then down through the volcanic forests of…
From the Caldera Into the Fire We awake this morning in our rustic cabin on Diamond Lake. The sun rise is behind us and we enjoyed the pleasure and grandeur of the sunset over the mountain ridge last night from a pontoon boat that I cajoled our group into renting. I was asked if I knew how to pilot a boat and I said, “sure!” The truth is, I did go for two summers to…
Columbia Gorgeous The Columbia River Gorge is designated as a Federal National Scenic Area (in1986) and is the largest such tract in the United States at 80 miles long and a average of about 12 miles wide. By my math, that suggests about 800 square miles, which makes the area as big as the state of Rhode Island. Besides all the beautiful scenery and massive water flow that drains the Cascade Mountain range and the…
Into the Breach Today we are trekking Eastward from Astoria, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River, towards the famous Columbia River Gorge. That will take us directly past Portland, the scene of the greatest crime against American democracy the country has ever known. Just being close to Portland gets my blood boiling. We will start the day with a visit to Fort Clatsop in the midst of the Lewis and Clark National Park.…
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream When Shakespeare has Hamlet ponder this thought, it is a follow-on to the famous “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Shakespeare is as heralded a poet as he is because he does, indeed, ponder the imponderable thoughts we all have on any given day. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea…