The Cheesecake Connection The Cheesecake Connection It’s 2020 and I am working through my self-assigned chores as diligently as I can. I have started on the garage door openers. What can be more suburban than garage door openers? They scream that we live in car country and that we are all about technological convenience. I choose not to call it laziness, and God knows I am lazy, but garage door openers have entered the realm…
Here Comes the Sun Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear Here comes the sun Here comes the sun, and I say It’s all right – The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969 (50 years ago) Out here in California I wake up every day to the sunrise over Mt. Palomar to the East. It’s a perfect setting for my morning joint-soothing dip into the…
Car Culture Do you remember American Graffiti with Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfus and Harrison Ford? It was 29-year-old George Lucas’ breakout directorial and screenwriting debut. It was set in 1962 Modesto, California. That feels perfectly normal and to be expected for this American coming-of-age classic, except that it was only filmed a decade after the time it was set, which makes me scratch my head about how Lucas and all of us could get so…
The Truth About Duluth Ever since I gave up on wearing tidy whiteys, which must now be over thirty years ago, I have been in search of the perfect underwear. That may sound like a mundane quest or one that should never have been in play, but the technology of clothing and materials has come a long way. We were all raised to think that only cotton could keep you comfortable, and that keeping it…
A Call to Greatness Today, while wandering through a Home Depot looking for flashlights and varmint spray I got a call from Lulu Publishing. They are the the self-publishing company that I have used to publish three books written mostly in 2017 when I had lots of time on my hands as the New York Wheel went into legal rigor mortis over the issue of construction costs, which were under firm completion-guaranteed fixed-price contract, but…
Catching Up I had lunch with an old friend today. In actuality, this was a guy who worked for me on two occasions and worked with me on another project where he was positioned to be my #2 guy. He last worked for me twelve years ago, so since we have stayed in regular touch with one another, it is fair to say we are friends more than colleagues. There is a point in time…
Youthful Exuberance Well, we did it. We drove 2,900 miles across country, arriving in Hidden Meadows at Casa Moonstruck at 7:00am precisely this morning. Hey, wait a minute, did I just say 7:00 AM? After driving 10.5 hours from New York to Knoxville covering 707 miles (avg. 67 mph), and 12 hours from Knoxville to OKC covering 864 miles (avg. 72 mph), we had planned to drive for just 8 hours to Santa Fe covering…
Feeding Myself I have often said that if my only path to nourishment was through my own cooking, that I would probably weigh 120 pounds. This has less to do with my physiology and much more to do with my abject inability and disinterest in preparing food. People naturally assume that due to my size, I must be willing to do whatever it takes to enable significant consumption of large quantities of food. Not…
The Tattoo of Life We are all a product of what life has dealt us over the years. Some people wear it on their face with their wrinkles showing the hardships they have endured. Other people show the wear and tear on their souls where it is not as obvious at first, but comes through equally clearly after time spent with them. I think we all know people that have become embittered with age. They…
Educating Our Children I recently saw an old Confucian proverb that goes: If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children. I was raised in a household that valued education. My mother had grown up in rural upstate New York in a family where neither the mother nor father had much formal education. They were a…