My Personal Rainbow It is a transitional weather morning here on my hilltop. It rained and was stormy yesterday and last night and it looks like today it wants to alternate between that weather and clear and sunny by tomorrow. I am sitting at my desk on hold with some service provider or another. I have started to be in the habit of acknowledging that I now live on the West Coast and the rest…
Another Thursday Night Everybody gets into routines. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Waldo, as he apparently liked to be called, was a big thinker in his time (the mid-Nineteenth Century) and a champion of several causes that don’t necessarily hang together much these days. He was an abolitionist, a transcendentalist and an individualist. I’m not sure I ever…
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…
Alone in the Vastness I have written these words many times since 1995, which was when I acquired my Rikelme painting of a lone tree standing on the Pampas of Patagonia. The painting is called Solo en la Imensidad (Alone in the. Vastness), and I have always admired the sentiment of the lone and solid tree standing by itself and giving life to a small ecosystem around it. There is nobility in that tree and…
Out of Reach In the process of building my Hobbit House, I had decided to farm out the stucco work, originally to Handy Brad, who has done some stucco work around the place, and more recently to one of a couple guys who answered Handy Brad’s ad on the Next Door app. That seemed to both Handy Brad and me as the sensible thing to do since Stucco may not be that hard to do,…
The Tempest and the Tinsmith I guess I haven’t yet really figured out the seasons here on this hillside. Back east there was a higher degree of familiarity about what February, March or April meant when it came to the events of nature. It would be hard to say that there is more variability out here, but I guess I would say that the stability of the weather out here makes what little variability we…
A Birthday for the Ages I have been saying I am 68 years old for the better part of the year. I am not sure why I do that, but I always declare my age as the next birthday I am expecting. I have never been afraid of aging, though I probably should be. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel a full share of aches and pains, even though I…
Trust as a Four Letter Word We have a convention in this country that only partially or barely exists in many other countries. We buy life insurance. Initially, it is sold to us (note that I say sold TO us as opposed to bought BY us or sought out BY us) as a responsible way for us breadwinners to ease our guilt with the dependence we have created for our families on our income earning…
Getting Pickled I am writing this story on Sunday night, knowing that it will publish on Wednesday morning. That timing is relevant since when most people read this, Kim and I will be off getting pickled. Couples in retirement have many different ways of operating. In general I think it is fair to say that most couples try to balance individual activities with couples activities. It’s really not good to operate like working couples who…
Words and Pictures I have stumbled on a movie tonight that has happened at a moment when I have realized that after being ahead of myself on these stories for a dry long time, I have run the kettle dry. I just published a story for tomorrow morning and have to get a jump on Saturday’s story and then Sunday’s, etcetera, etcetera. How unusual that I should stumble on this particular movie staring Clive Owen…