I did something today that I have only done a handful of times since 2020, but which I have done countless times over the course of my life. In fact, maybe I can count the times. I would estimate that I’ve done it over 700 times, and with a few exceptions along the way, I’ve always done it with different people. I’m not so different than most men my age in this regard. I probably…
A few years ago, Olivia Newton John regrettably fell prey to her long battle with breast cancer. She was 73, so way too young. She began her career in the late 1960s in Australia and the UK, and made her Billboard Hot 100 debut in 1971. She built a reputation as a soft-spoken country-pop singer, winning the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1974. Her 1974 hit I Honestly Love You went to…
This morning I’m thinking about a riff on Samuel Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.” One of literature’s great ironies is that even while surrounded by ocean, one can die of thirst. The irony of the name…and my name…is not lost on me. The quote is rich with symbolism and paradox. The poem itself captures Coleridge’s symbolism of the albatross, which stands for sin and…
I wrote last August about a visit I had from my old Roman motorcycling friend, Mike Cobbold, who now lives in Sacramento. I mentioned in my Roman Memories story that Mike has struggled with some physical limitations due to a combination of many years of Type 1 Diabetes, the connected autoimmune condition of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and some strokes… all possibly genetic or perhaps signs of a life lived hard and well in the wilderness. On…
In some ways its a perfectly normal late spring on the hilltop and in other ways its all a little bit different. The normal part is that San Diego weather is just about as nice as one could ask it to be. While we had a little heat wave glory a few months ago, since then I would say it’s been very mild. The rainfall has been a little bit above normal (about 115%) with…
Ever since 2016 and especially since 2024, I, like many like-minded, liberally-inclined Americans that have worried about the political drift of out nation and its impact on the world have tried to find ways to do our part to move towards a solution to our concerns and our state of play. I start by declaring quite frankly that for most of my adult life I have lived in a benign neglect for the political machinations.…
The “China Syndrome” refers to a hypothetical nuclear reactor meltdown scenario where the reactor core melts through the containment vessel and, theoretically, continues melting downward through the Earth. The darkly humorous idea being that it would melt all the way to China (from the US perspective). I wonder if that was intended to be a reaction to the “Butterfly Effect”? The actual physics involve in the former is a reactor core losing cooling, causing fuel…
On Sunday, Kim and I went to go see the new Michael Jackson biopic called, with no surprises, Michael. The film was released April 24, 2026, so we were now opening-nighters. I had heard from my son Roger that it was a good movie that very much resonated with him since Jackson’s dominance of the music scene in the 1980s coincided with Roger’s youth and it left a big impression on him. I was less…
Back in 1981 when I was 27 years old and living in the quaint suburban Metro NYC town of Rockville Centre on Long Island, I came home from work from yet another long day in the NY banking world and thought I was having a heart attack. My wife wasn’t home so I drove myself the mile to Mercy Hospital to the ER, where they put me on a EKG machine. Within the hour, a…
I just returned from a five-day 1,500 mile motorcycle ride surrounded by mountains, canyons and desert, all at speeds averaging 85-90 mph. I started doing these rides, especially like this one to Southern Utah, 32 years ago. It was then that I came up with the five-day format that I have tended to follow ever since. Of course, I was 40 years old then where I’m 72 now…minor difference, right? I have been quite anxious…