Parsing the Day Today I went out early and took the string trimmer down to the lower hillside below the wildflower garden and weed-whacked myself into oblivion. Operating an electric power-pack string trimmer does not look like particularly hard work until you do it for a while. These tools are well constructed and properly balanced so that the handle is pretty much in the right spot so that its as easy as possible to make…
Movie of the Week Movies have been a big part of my life for over fifty years. They were my screen time in high school. They were big event gatherings in college. They were weekend entertainment getaways in my early adulthood. They were a videotaped passion to share with my kids on vacation at the beach house or the ski house. And now, in later adulthood, they are major relaxation fillers for an increasingly sedentary…
Snakebite We live in rattlesnake country and May is rattlesnake month on this hilltop. Last year we had five rattlesnake incidents in May and then didn’t hear from the serpents again for the rest of the year. I’m guessing they were out there, but despite all my traipsing around the hillside every day, they seemed to stay away from me and to whatever extent they were on the property, we coexisted just fine. That is…
Beyond the Blue Horizon That song from Rain Man is repeating in my head for some reason this morning. The 1974 Lou Christie song has a twangy melody that feels somehow soothing. It’s lyrics are simple and its about how your life has only begun when you look out into the blue horizon and watch the rising sun. At this very moment, I am sitting in my office and looking east over my cactus knoll…
The Final Lie There is something so symbolic about Tucker Carlson’s final send-off to his Fox News audience of some 4.1 million loyal sycophants. He ends by saying something stupid about how he will be telling them about how they are being forced to eat bugs and then quickly reminds them that he promises to see them all on Monday. That was last Friday and, of course, as we all know now, Monday morning he…
Brave New World When people think about 20th Century dystopic novels, they tend to think about the 1949 book, 1984 by George Orwell (his real name, Eric Arthur Blair). It was Orwell’s last of nine published books since he died the next year of tuberculosis before the full impact of his theme story about democratic socialism in a fictional country called Oceania, who’s capital city is London. But the seminal dystopic novel, written eighteen years…
Happiness is an Old iPad Keyboard This morning I picked up on an article sent to me by Apple News. I like these daily emails because they give me headline overviews of curated articles, only some of which I have otherwise seen in my regular news feeds from the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, the New Yorker, National Geographic or Financial Times. I would estimate that at least two thirds of the headlines are…
Experimental Gardening I have pretty much worn my shorts every day this week, which means that summer is finally upon us. Technically its still spring, both by the calendar and the temperature, but after a long cool (I can’t bring myself to say cold) and wet few months, I am ready to shift back into warm weather gear. During the past week and a bit, I have been in the garden every day for some…
Animal House I hadn’t watched the movie National Lampoon’s Animal House for many years. To people of my generation and background, this 1978 movie staring John Belushi, is a classic. While the movie was supposedly written about Dartmouth, the similarity to my experiences at Cornell in 1971-1975 are quite startling. Having seen this movie so many times over the past 45 years, I know most of the gags by heart (and made sure to preview…
Humping Mulch If you read my stories every day you can’t help but notice that one day I may talk about cerebral issues that seem important to me, whether they are psychological, economic, social or political. The next day I may well write about my aching back and how I injured myself trying to do something on my hillside that was beyond my natural abilities, as they exist in my advancing age. It was Rene…