A Walk in the Clouds There is a wonderful 1995 film with Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn called A Walk in the Clouds. It is set in the vineyards of Northern California and is an epic tale of a family’s struggle to maintain its heredity among the changing winds of time that buffet the world after WWII. There is something about that time and place that resonates with me and whenever I see or think…
The Glorious Mid-Century If you spend any time watching House Hunter shows on HGTV or DIY Network (aka Magnolia Network), you have watched people rave about mid-century this or mid-century that. It is not atypical that we look back at the past with rose-colored glasses. Every generation does it to some degree. The past always looks rosier, probably because we remember the good and forget the bad. There is also the reality that looking back…
Winstons I Have Known I don’t know nor have I known too many Winstons in my life. The name first came into recorded existence in 1880 and since then there have been over 27,000 males recorded with that name. In the most recent year on record, 2018, there were 787 male newborns named Winston in the United States. To put that into perspective, my name, Richard, during that same span of 1880-2018 had 2,574,832 male…
The Land of the Dollar Bill For some reason that 1974 song by a band called Paperlace, The Night Chicago Died is running in my head like the sound of running feet and the shouting in the street. I had a peaceful enough Saturday that had no particular connection to Al Capone’s gangland Chicago, but when does that matter when a line of lyrics gets wedged into your brain? The reason I suspect I am…
The Real Reality TV Hero We all spent the better part of five years dealing with Donald J. Trump, who was, by any rational standards an abject failure as a real estate developer and general businessman. Those of us from New York City (I was there 1976 through 2019), and especially those of us who spent some of those years in the real estate development game, as I did between 2008 and 2017, were always…
Oh, Amelia I have mentioned that National Geographic is one of my last vestigial magazine subscriptions. I don’t stack them side-by-side in yellow-spined glory on some dusty basement shelf, as I remember them from my youth. But I do let them linger on the bedside table, the office glass-top table and the bathroom magazine caddy well beyond their otherwise useful life. I actually do glance through and read parts of the hard glossy copy, but…
The Not-So-Great Gatsby I was just reminded that its been 100 years since that summer on West Egg (the North Shore of Long Island) when Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby dallied with the rich and famous of East Egg. Clearly, 1922 was a carefree moment in U.S. history when the War to end all wars was behind them and the world looked like one big party that would never end. The old money crowd was…
Heading Into Darkness I’ve never been one that was terribly afraid of the dark. As a young child I preferred to have the door cracked open, like most kids, but I also always wanted a glass of water before bedtime. That makes me think it had more to do with wanting some attention and assurance of connectivity than any particular fear of the loss of light. These days we sleep with blackout shades (which Kim…
Pax Americana We are all either wary or weary of events unfolding in Ukraine. It has been going on since 2014 or since late November (not coincidentally just after the Biden election win), depending on when you mark time with regard to the West’s awareness and acknowledgement that Putin has been on the warpath. In the last 48 hours, things have gone from a question of whether Putin will back down to just how far…
A Busy Week Every day when I sit down to write, I ask myself what is going on that can make a good story. This exercise is not about just regurgitating the events of my life or the opinions I hold about the world events underway, or, for that matter, the recitation of the memories that come to mind that are fascinating to me because they revolve around my life. It so happens that I…