The Best of Times The New Year always brings out of the woodwork all manner of articles reflecting on the past and the future. The ones I read most closely are those that deal with the here and now. Today I read a Times Op/Ed piece entitled so as to highlight what the writer feels that we are living in the best times that have ever existed, what he called “the best time to be…
Lazy Daze There is a large cocktail party underway in the House of Representatives Chamber in the U.S. Capital today. I say that because it is past 5:00pm in Washington D.C., so officially into Happy Hour, and the scene on the floor of the House is not so much chaotic as without any discernible direction. At a cocktail party, once you have a drink in hand, you wander around aimlessly, chit-chatting your way around the…
Trailers Today I am hopeful of doing my first transaction for 2023 and it could be a meaningful one. A month or so ago I finally put an ad on a website called Trailer Traders. For ten years I have had a motorcycle trailer that I have used perhaps ten times to take my motorcycles across the desert to a place where I can comfortably ride them to one of my motorcycle club’s gatherings. I…
Raindrops on Roses It is hard to miss. When it’s not sunny out here, it seems the options of what to do with one’s day are severely limited. One would think that spending a lifetime in an area where there are between 120 days (NYC) and 160 days (Ithaca) of annual precipitation, would make one accustomed to getting through a rainy day. Out here there are closer to 20 rain days in a year and…
New Year Resolutions Getting older has its advantages. I don’t just mean the older and wiser issue, though there is plenty of truth to that. What I really mean is that there is a degree of reality and truth that stems from a clarity that escapes us when we are younger. I’m sure there are people who cannot help but delude themselves in their dotage so as not to spend their waning moments wallowing in…
A Gap Year As we come up to the turn of the year, I find myself thinking about the new year and what it holds for us all. The year has a number of things in store that make it a potentially interesting year for us, but there is also an increasing sense I am getting that it may be one of those years that gets us from here to there without being a particularly…
The Royal Bot You may not have noticed it, but the world has changed. As you know, I teach an ethics course, so I think about the issue of what are the fundamental causes of ethical dilemmas. I started my list with the overwhelming cause of all ethical stuff, which is filthy lucre, money, do-re-me. You know that I’ve expanded the list well beyond just that, but let’s take a moment to consider money as…
Apocalyptic New Year Auld Lang Syne is one of those songs that we all know (sort of) and sing at the passing of things like the old to new year, but few of us have a clue as to what it means and what the song is really about. The song is about 250 years old and was a rewrite of an old Scottish folk song, done by the long-time national poet laureate of Scotland,…
Babylon Revisited After two days of raucous holiday festivities on the hilltop (22 in attendance on Christmas Eve and 14 in attendance on Christmas Day), by late afternoon we were ready to crash hard as the day wound down and the travelers hit the road for points known and unknown. We were left with Tom and Jenna and Kim and I with the added knowledge that Tom and Jenna would be leaving in the morning…
Leaving My Wingman As the sun comes up in the east and I can feel that graininess in my eyeballs that comes from insufficient sleep, I am comforted in knowing that at the other end of my house on the hilltop, my little baby boy (Thomas) is fast asleep with his fiancé, Jenna. How they got there only several hours ago is a story of holiday travel 2022 that I feel may be worth sharing.…