A Trace of Grits We started out down the Natchez Trace today. The first job was figuring out where the name Trace comes from. As I should have guessed, it seems to be a combination of the definitions to copy and to follow in the path of. It seems this trail was originally one of the old animal trails that were likely created to get deer and other animals to and from the nearest salt…
The Land of Elvis Every once in a while an entertainer comes along that captures the imagination of the nation and ascends into immortality. In this generation that honor seems to belong to Taylor Swift, but in my generation no one ever got bigger than Elvis Presley. He represented and transcended the decades of the 50s, 60s, and 70s all at once. Very few of us that came of age in those years could deny…
Living Under the Iron Dome I’m killing time this morning on Central Park South, waiting to head out to Brooklyn and then LaGuardia for a flight to Nashville. That’s an unusual place to be for me so I am watching too much news of the world. That’s what gets me thinking about the Iron Dome. That, of course, is the name given to the missile and drone defense system installed by Israel (with lots of…
4AM Again In the early decade of my career, while living in Rockville Centre on the South Shore of Long Island, I was 36 scheduled minutes on the Long Island Railroad into Penn Station. Penn is at 7th Avenue and 33rd Street. My office in those days was at Park Avenue and 48th Street. Once I had tested the waters of New York commuting, I knew that I was not built for rush hour travel,…
Nashville Cats It’s been almost sixty years since John Sebastian of the Lovin’Spoonful penned the lyrics to his eighth Top 40 pop song Nashville Cats. Since then, Nashville has only become more central to the music world and it seems to be in evidence even on the plane flight from LaGuardia to the Nashville Airport. Almost every person on our short, small plane Embraer flight seemed to be a country music star except one. She…
Cataracts There are very few of our senses that we prize more than sight. i think I am on safe ground with that statement though I imagine people who are blind or became blinded might make a valiant effort to disagree. If you lose your sense of smell or taste, I dare say you would go on in life with only minimal adjustment. Many of us start losing our hearing as we get older and…
An Uncivil War This afternoon, Kim and I will join brother-in-law Jeff and his wife Lisa at our local Angelika Theater for an opening weekend showing of Civil War, the Alex Garland movie about an all-too-close-to-home dystopian near future for America where certain factions revolt against the established U.S. government leadership. The perspective it takes seems very pertinent in that it follows the actions of a group of imbedded photojournalists who are tracking and reporting…
Nice Try Like everybody these days, my inbox and credit cards are inundated with fees for every service under the sun. The concept of micro fees and subscriptions has become a big issue in modern life. One of the reasons I subscribe to Rocket Money for $8.99/months is that they regularly remind me of all the small and large subscription fees I am being charged, which forces me to reexamine my services on a regular…
The Passage of Time Outside on our deck on the wall of the house where there are no windows, we have placed a large 30” metal wall clock. These days, large wall clocks with a certain artistic statement are not so unusual. You can buy one on Wayfair or any manner of online shopping site and have your choice of countless styles. We actually bought this particular clock to hang over the inside front door,…
April Panorama It’s hard to keep a perspective on the weather when you live in a place like San Diego. We are in our fifth year of living full-time on this hilltop and I am generally pretty happy about the weather overall, but more confused than not, especially at this time of year, about what is normal, what is abnormal and what is shifting. I will define the normal/abnormal axis as the cyclical swings of…