The Fringes of Fall We turned an important page yesterday. We wrapped up a whirlwind weekend actualizing and celebrating my youngest son Tom’s wedding to his new bride, Jenna. The wedding itself was on Sunday, which the cognoscenti will recognize as indicative that it was a Jewish ceremony held under a chuppah, a Jewish bridal canopy. Tom is not Jewish, but Jenna is. Tom was raised in a very open and embracing manner in Manhattan,…
Being Rude Modern life is all about managing through an 8 billion person world. It can be misleading as we travel around from here to there. Whether in the West or the East, the North or the South, there are great swaths of wide open spaces. I watched a movie the other day called Survive. It was about a woman who is suicidal who survives a plane crash and then has to find her way…
Hot & Cold Water We are in Beacon, New York this Labor Day weekend for my son Tom’s wedding, which will take place on Sunday. He is marrying Jenna, who we have known for ten years, and Kim and I could not be happier about it. Tom and Jenna got engaged two years ago when he proposed to her under the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side of the East River. As we were coming…
The Not-So-Dead Sea Scrolls I enjoy drilling down on articles in the National Geographic, and this week NG is highlighting an article on the Dead Sea Scrolls and what they tell us about the thinking at the time of the life of Jesus Christ, and thus how that thinking impacted the development of early Christianity. This piqued my interest for two reasons. First, my general interest in antiquity and specifically the history of such an…
And the Heat Goes On We all know that summer goes as a season until the Autumnal Equinox, one of the two times in the year when the sun’s path crosses directly over the equator and the length of the day is equal to the length of the night (approximately), which this year happens to fall smack dab in between September 22nd and 23rd. And we know from experience here in the Northern Hemisphere that…
The Pacific Has No Memory The Shawshank Redemption has been the top-rated movie on IMDb ever since it went to video almost thirty years ago. Strangely enough, the movie was not a box office success, and while it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won not a one. It’s heritage was solid, having been based on a story written by Stephen King and adapted by director Frank Darabont, who never again did anything as…
The Cold Cut of Life I know before I write this that I will receive any number of comments and criticism for what I am about to write. This is less because I plan to write something controversial or fundamentally bad, but more because I am playing into both a gender stereotype, and what many of you have always suspected is a personal flaw of mine. I mentioned in passing that the other day I…
Stack & Roll When I was twelve years old we moved from Wisconsin to Maine. There were many things about that move that were milestones. My mother was going from being a graduate and post-graduate student to again being a gainfully employed professional, earning 7X the income that we had lived on for the past four years. We were moving from an enlightened urban center in the Midwest where we drank “pop” to the deep…
Trimming the Palm Tree The Mexican Fan Palm is a native palm tree that comes from Baja California and the Sonoran Desert. That means it is an indigenous plant more or less and not something that was imported from Madagascar or some such exotic place. Things grow so well in this 9-10-rated climate zone that it is not surprising that the Mexican Fan Palm thrives just a few miles north of its native habitat. It…
Fly Me To the Moon I must admit that I haven’t spent a lot of time focused on the space race since that was the race between Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson to be the first billionaire in space. So, I wasn’t so very aware that both Russia and India were rushing to beat one another to land an unmanned ship at the South Pole of the moon. I’m not sure that is…