Our Own Reality This Christmas my daughter Carolyn gave me a great grandparent gift in the form of a 2024 calendar that is a four-inch block of daily photos of my granddaughters. That means that I have a pad of 366 (2024 is a Leap Year) daily reminders of the charm and beauty of my two granddaughters, Charlotte and Evelyn. When you stop and think about that, to gather and even have 366 current photos…
Blind-Sided One of the fun, but supposedly true life stories made into a movie in the past few years was the story of Michael Oher, the former NFL offensive lineman who was taken in during high school by the Tuohy family of Memphis. The movie, called The Blind Side, based on the book by the same name written by Michael Lewis (strangely enough a writer mostly of financial stories), refers to the offensive line position…
An AI Experiment Out of the blue, a friend and former colleague sent me a book called Command the Page by Charlie Deist. The book is intended to help writers embrace AI for the benefit of their writing and to do what he calls “future-proof” your future creative career. Deist goes through his own journey over the last year of ubiquitous presence of AI in the hands of the general public. We have all heard…
The Ropa-Dope Going back to the time between 1977 and 1990, I was a daily commuter into Manhattan from Long Island. I realize that it sounds totally crazy (something I failed to comprehend at the time), but I would get up at 4am every weekday morning and catch the 5:14am train from Rockville Centre into Penn Station. I would then share a cab (always with the same two other guys who I know only from…
The Korean Clown Car I’m sure it is not lost on any of us that the economies that seem to be doing the best across the world, other than the American economy, have been Germany, Japan and now Korea. In fairness, the first two were our enemies in WWII and the third was our ally (given that I am referring to South Korea or, technically, the Republican of Korea), but all three countries were the…
Picking Your Seat There is an old Dad joke that was used when a kid would get caught pulling at his underpants, squirming this way and that. The Dad would say, “You going to the movies?” The kid would, of course, say, “no, why?” And the Dad would ask him with a big grin, “Then why are you picking your seat?” Its always a good one because its a cute play on words and it…
Body Memory I have thought for years that is a beautiful thing. We all have used the expression that its like riding a bike, meaning that we will never forget how to ride a bike once we have done it since the body rememberers the intricacies of the balance and movements necessary to stay on a moving bicycle. We often call it muscle memory, but it is more than that since it involves all the…
Why Poker? I sense that the craze over poker as exemplified by all the celebrity poker on TV and the televising of The World Series of Poker, has come down of that high and has settled back down to more normal level of popularity. When I go to Las Vegas, I know a game of poker is a sensible way to while away my gambling hours since I can more or less control the rate…
The Cost of Living At a recent holiday gathering a nephew of mine who is currently feeling put upon by life (he has an injury that is very painful and its effecting every aspect of his enjoyment of life according to him), recited something that he had read about San Diego being the most expensive city in America. That didn’t feel right to me so I looked it up and found the source, which was…
Snow Day No, it is not snowing here on the hilltop, but as I look out to the north, for the first time this season, I see snow on the tops of the San Gabriel Mountains to the direct north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the slight northeast. It does not look like a full-on snow covering, but just a dusting. Nevertheless, it is a reminder of all the fun I have had in…