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…
Jack of All Trades One of the oldest English expressions is “Jack of all trades” which dates back to Old English in 1390 when, during Medieval Times, it was considered a strength for a man to be knowledgeable and capable in several different skills. One might even suggest that since that was really the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, that the Jack of all trades may well have morphed…
I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up There use to be a very funny commercial with some elderly woman on the kitchen floor pressing a small transmitting device that she wore around her neck which would announce to some emergency service or other that she had fallen in her home and that she was unable to get up. Naturally, there was nothing really funny about the situation since that happens all too often to the…
Moses and Wealth Yesterday, in honor of Holy Week, Netflix put on a three-part series about Moses. It was a dramatization of the well-known biblical story that starts with Moses’ birth to a poor Israelite family in Egypt, his dramatic adoption via the reed basket floated up the Nile and found by a royal princess despondent over the loss of her natural child. It spent little time reviewing Moses’ upbringing in the house of the…
Pixelating I understand the hierarchy of communications. It starts with the written word and moves to the spoken work (as in recorded). At the same time, the written word gives way to pictures, which then give way to video, which eventually gives way to live, real time video and audio interaction. It’s all very logical and its clear that involving more senses in the communicating process is almost always an improvement. The expression that a…
Wandering the World Wondering A few years ago, Kim and I were recording an audiobook in a NYC sound studio and I watched and giggled as Kim was having trouble distinguishing between the words wandering and wondering. They really are quite different words, but as different as they are, they are also somewhat similar. Do you wander the world or do you wonder about the world…or both simultaneously? I think we do both and I…
The Silence of the Lamb March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, right? Is that all about the balancing act of life or is it about the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere, or perhaps its all biblical in suggesting that lions and lambs can coexist? I really don’t know and Google isn’t being that helpful about it all. What I do know is that as we approach the end of…
Two of a Kind Kim and I are watching all the episodes of Loudermilk and the episode tonight involved the death of Loudermilk’s wayward father. As Loudermilk is trying to get his life back on track, his estranged father appears out of nowhere and Loudermilk is reminded about what a bad father he has. His father was a philanderer of epic proportions. It also turns out Loudermilk’s addiction problems connect directly to his Dad’s advice…
Ballast Yesterday I went to the rock store for the first time in a long time. I’ve used rock products around the property for a number of purposes over the past few years. I first bought a truckload of mixed size river rock of assorted coloration. I remember well thinking that I was smart to lay down a blue tarp on my upper driveway on which to have the rock dumped. Let’s put it this…