Going to War In 1972 I turned eighteen, which in those days was the age of majority on all fronts. At eighteen you could drive (even at night), you could drink (hopefully not before driving), you could vote (the 26th Amendment passed in 1970), and you could fight for your country without your parents’ permission (the single biggest argument favoring the 26th amendment). We needed young men (young women could also join but could not…
The Life of the Mind Today I had occasion to speak to a friend and colleague I worked with thirteen years ago and and saw probably five years ago. I have given him my blog address so, full disclosure, he may well be reading this just as you are reading this. Why do I mention that, because I am forever getting into hot water with people who share things with me and then find themselves…
Sucking the Marrow It’s late in the afternoon, but not so late that the sun is yet setting. My day starts early out here in San Diego. That is especially so on Tuesdays because Wednesday may be Prince Spaghetti Day (for those of you who grew up in or near Lowell, Mass.), but Tuesday is CEO Management Day. It is the day we get everyone together to update ourselves on what everybody is doing to…
It’s A Complicated World As I’ve been sending out my magnum opus to my friends, my 444-page coffee-table book about twenty-five years of motorcycle riding, called The Ride is All, it has given me cause to reconnect with a few friends who had fallen by the wayside. I am rewatching (for the umpteenth time) one of my favorite recent vintage movies, Green Book with Vigo Mortensen. As Tony Lip (Vigo) is driving Don Shirley (Mahershala…
And They Called Him Pedro Blanco For the first time since its founding in the days of John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps has recalled some 7,000 volunteers from around the world due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Think about that. Sixty years of global hostilities and scary events and it was this event which has caused a noble and stalwart body to send out an emergency message to all its field staff to leave where…
Out and About Recently I wrote a book for my motorcycling friends. It is a 444-page chronicle of the twenty-five years my little group of motorcycling friends have ridden together through thick and thin at home (mostly Utah and Vermont) and abroad. I had been planning on lugging thirty copies of the book to our next gathering in southern Utah. We have a spot we are particularly partial to in Teasdale, which is near Torrey,…
Travel in the Time of Cholera The 2006 movie, The Painted Veil is a glorious and poignant movie that for some reason I thought was called Love in the Time of Cholera. When I looked it up I realized my mistake. Love in the Time of Cholera is book written by Gabriel García Márquez that was made into a movie at about the same time (2007) and is set in Colombia in the same time,…
Fast and Furious I keep two motorcycles out here in San Diego. My primary bike, as it has been since 1987, is a BMW. Beemers always start and rarely have problems. One time about seventeen years ago, on one of our May trips through Utah, the drive shaft rear end differential on my KLT bike shit the bed and caused me to let the group ride on to Durango while I waited in Moab for…
Of Moths and Flames We are slowly but surely getting hooked on the Netflix series Dirty Money. I’m sure that we are way behind and everyone has already watched these great Dateline-like shows. Tonight we watched both the show about the Goldman Sachs Malaysian scandal that brought down Lloyd Blankfein and remains an embarrassment to David Soloman and the one about the Kushner Company’s history of being a controversial landlord in the Northeast. I found…
Bubbling Away in Coronaville It’s Monday morning of the first day of the rest of our lives. I like to say things that are indisputable and I think that ticks the box. It already feels different. I have called all three of my kids in the past twelve hours and checked to see that they and the grandgerms are OK. The initial report is that one had a skirmish with his wife over a family…