We all know that pain is a part of life and from a young age we learn how we can best cope with it. We have all seen the Pain Scale at the doctor’s office that goes from 1 to 10 and uses little round colored faces to go from a blue/green smiley face at the #1 level (No Pain) all the way up to the deep red wincing or crying face (Worst Pain Imaginable)…
It was truly a dark and stormy night here in Southern California with whipping winds and rain coming down in buckets. The garden was well past saturation point and now I had to start worrying about the tall stately cacti and succulents on my hilltop that tend to fall over under their own weight when things get too soggy. We had gone out to an anniversary (18th) dinner with houseguest Phillip and Kim’s brother Jeff…
A few days ago, I got a letter in the mail. I’m not sure when the last time was that I got an actual letter, as in a correspondence from a friend, via the United States mail. It was not in a legal-sized envelope. It was in a personal stationary-sized envelope that had a regular stamp and was hand addressed. It actually felt like a flash from the past, which was exactly what it was.…
I’m never quite sure what causes the gardening bug to take hold of me at certain times. I can go along without giving the garden a thought and then all of a sudden I get the urge and find myself in the midst of a growing list of garden projects. The funny thing is that while I’m sure that in other parts of the world, it’s the advent of spring or the coming of winter…
This morning I got into a conversation about social media with my neighbor Melisa. It was an especially interesting conversation because we were approaching the issues of social media from very different perspectives. Fundamentally, it seems that Melisa has the same sorts of concern about the affect that social media has on young people who can’t get their face out of their phones. Her points were mostly focused on how much better it is for…
Today is Super Bowl Sunday and they say that there may be more people around the world watching this game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles than watched the 1969 moon landing. I know it is unAmerican to say this, but I don’t get it. I understand that people like a spectacle and the Super Bowl show is nothing if not a spectacle. This is about a $100 million show. The stadium…
I have never been terribly involved in local politics or even community organizing. I think that stems from my personal history of being moved around so much in my early life. We never lived anywhere long enough to justify getting too deep into whatever community we were living in at the moment. When I was in my early adulthood, I was busy with other priorities and it always felt like local stuff was less important.…
My mother spent a lot of time in her youth (after college) skiing just as the sport was beginning, playing tennis on a clay court she and her cousin, Betty (no better Depression era names than Millie & Betty), and playing golf with things called a “mashie”, “spoon” and “niblick”. She was my role model in all things including sports, so those were the sports I aspired to play. During her grad school days in…
I was just speaking with a friend who out of the blue asked me if I had ever gone through therapy. Needless to say that sort of question makes one sit up and take notice since it is not a question asked in the normal course. Perhaps if there was a broader discussion underway about mental health in general it might be contextually routine, but when it comes out of the blue with a person…
When I was young, one of the things that made absolutely no sense to me was soup. How could anyone feel that a bowl of some flavored liquid, even with a few chunks of meat and a few noodles would be fulfilling? I just didn’t get it and had little or no use for soup. Back in 2002 as I was crossing over into middle age, there were a few years when I got into…