Category: Memoir

Business Advice Memoir Politics

Ay Caramba!

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

When I awoke to the news alert from the Financial Times that President Trump had announced a U.S. invasion of Venezuela resulting in the capture, seizure and removal of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, presumably to some U.S.-controlled location, I was not totally surprised. I then watched this morning as Trump and Secretary of “War” Hegseth, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio standing behind nodding, spoke about the unprecedented aggressive military action. Something Hegseth…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir Retirement

Back At It

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

There is something about these years when Christmas and New Years fall in the middle of the week (this year it was Thursday) that make the holidays feel like they are somewhat extended. I don’t want to sound like the Grinch, but they seem to be dragging on. Truth be told, our relatives (other than son Tom) left quite briskly on the 26th and Tom did his usual departure on New Years Eve, all of…

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Memoir

Deluge

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

It’s January 1 and the deluge has descended on the hilltop. We have a flat roof, so when it rains hard we really hear and feel it and it certainly has been raging hard this morning. There is a sort of end-of-the-world element to this morning’s rain since we cannot see even to the edges of our property with the heavy fog that is enveloping us. Last night at a simple and early gathering at…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir

Deep Blue

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

For the second day in a row, I find myself sittting here in the living room of our hilltop with the sun shining brightly on a crisp December morning and the air being so clear that the Pacific Ocean feels to be right at our feet to the west. Just over the rolling hills of Vista that sit between our hilltop and the coast, we can see a full 40 miles of deep blue ocean.…

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Memoir Politics

10 Years a Slave

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

Twelve Years a Slave refers to both a powerful historical memoir and its acclaimed film adaptation. The memoir itself was written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York, who was kidnapped in Washington D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spent 12 years enslaved on plantations before being rescued in 1853. His detailed firsthand account became one of the most important slave narratives, providing unprecedented insight into…

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Memoir

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

Back in the mid-1960s we were living in Maine while my mother set up and ran the first women’s Job Corps center at the old Poland Spring resort complex. It was quite a change of pace and place for us. Discounting my first 4-5 years as a blur of on and off images, I had spent my life in two places, a tropical valley in Costa Rica and then a grad student subsistence life in…

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Love Memoir

Jeff Grogg

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

We recently lost Jeff Grogg to the universe. Jeff was a beloved husband to Lisa, a beloved brother to Kim and Sharon, a beloved uncle to Will, Josh and even a non-Grogg like my son Tom and also a feisty as shit brother-in-law to me. About 30 years ago I stood a few miles from here at Mission San Luis Rey giving my first eulogy. That was for my father and I learned an important…

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Love Memoir

Feeling Great

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

I feel great. No one has ever accused me of not being expressive, but I am having a hard time not telling the world how great I feel at the moment. I think this falls into the category of being thankful of my blessings, something I am always all about these days. And I know that there will be times and days when I do not feel great, so I like to acknowledge the moments…

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Love Memoir

Home for the Holidays

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

There is something about the holidays that make us all want to hunker down around hearth and home. This year, nature is cooperating in that program by delivering what looks to be a four day stretch of foul weather to our hilltop and the surrounding county. That foul weather is starting today and running through Friday, which means it will engulf Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and what the Brits like to call Boxing Day. Kim’s…

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Memoir Politics

Making Sausage

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

All major religious traditions have narratives about moral decline and its consequences. Start by thinking about Christianity. The Bible contains several narratives depicting periods of widespread moral corruption and their consequences. The earliest and most dramatic example occurs in Genesis and describes the pre-flood world as, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This leads…

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