Deadly Encounter I have just heard on the radio and read in Time Magazine about the West Nile and EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitic) viruses. It seems that in the Northeast, centered in Eastern Massachusetts, there has been an outbreak of these viruses that has caused some not-insignificant public health concerns. We are headed to Nova Scotia and the surrounding provinces in a few weeks and our friends Mike and Melisa are heading into new England…
Catching a Break It has been a very warm week here on the hilltop. Notice that I am saying warm and not hot. Because it has been dry, the warmth of the day has felt good and not bad or oppressive. Nonetheless, when I stopped by to see our friends Faraj and Yasuko yesterday, two people who seem always on the go and usually outside in the garden, they were hunkered in the house with…
The Art of Disparagement When you disparage someone, you are making false and injurious statements about something. Usually it refers to comments made about a business or product rather than a person directly. Directing such false and injurious comments against a person is called defamation and most often takes the form of libel (written or visual) or slander (spoken or audible). All of this specificity is intended to get to the bottom of the comments…
Death on the Hilltop No, no one has died…yet. Last night I got a strange email from someone I didn’t know. It began, “I haven’t met you yet, but I have been living in the neighborhood since 2013.” It was from a woman who claimed to be in our neighborhood and who was forwarding an email that had been sent a few weeks ago by her husband. It went on to say, “My husband realized…
The Fog Returns I am sitting here on my hilltop and see that I am surrounded by fog. Fog is a funny substance. On the one hand, it should be a welcome addition for purposes of the garden, giving everything a coating of its fine mist is a persistent and soaking way. I don’t know how much moisture plants get out of fog, but it seems like it would be good for them in its…
Life Is A Cabaret Kim has been singing and dancing her whole life. It is a very big part of who she is. When she has music to learn and arrangements to consider, she is at her happiest. SHe discovered cabaret as her medium of choice shortly after we got together in 2005, so it is safe to say she has been doing cabaret for about twenty years. While we lived in NYC she was…
Beautiful Several years ago, Kim took me to see Beautiful, the Broadway show about the music, life and times of Carole King (a.k.a. Carol Joan Klein). The other night, Kim bought tickets to see a production of the same show at something called the Moonlight Amphitheater in nearby Vista. To begin with, I must say that the Moonlight is a lovely venue that we are very lucky to have so nearby. It’s a great spot…
The Way We Were The 1973 film by that name starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand was impactful to me for many reasons. To begin with, the author of the script and the book on which the movie is based, Arthur Laurents, was a Cornell University graduate who was a contemporary of my mother. He was born about 10 months after my mother, so he was probably not Class of 1937, but he wrote his…
Hope Is Making a Comeback They say that the best political campaigns are those that appeal to change for the future. While people are generally fearful of change, they also want it because it gives them something to look forward to and few of us are ever totally content with the status quo. Normal modeling would suggest that there should be 20% of the population that likes what it has and is more worried about…
DNC Denouement Today starts two gatherings of great interest to many Americans. In Flushing Meadow we have the start of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, and in Chicago we have the start of the four days of the Democratic National Convention. I first went to the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament in 1977, the last year it was played at The West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills. That was a small, but grand venue with…