Lazy Day Kim gave me one of those 25-pound blankets for my birthday. We’ve been joking about them every time we see them advertised on TV, but I had no idea that she would buy one. For some reason I was very tired last night so I crawled into bed early and I do mean crawled because getting under that heavy blanket takes some effort. I don’t know whether it was being so tired or…
Wetter and Wilder in the Moment Tomorrow I turn sixty-seven. Since I am four days ahead of myself with my writing (a sure sign that I’ve been cooped up by the weather lately), you’ll be reading this when I am into my sixty-eighth year. I have a good relationship with aging, so I almost always refer to myself as being at the age of the year I am working on. That means that in a…
Hear Me Roar There is a little movie out there that has some great stars in it, but only ever did less than $50 million in box office receipts, so was not widely seen. It is called Secondhand Lions and starred Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment and Kyra Sedgwick. It was written and directed by an obscure Tim McCanlies who’s only other claim to fame was the Iron Giant animated film. The film…
What the Succulent? Today we are at the end of January, which means that in a few days I will have completed a full year of California residency, spending the vast majority of my days on this hilltop, with clear views to the ocean and mountains alike. As I sit in the living room I see verdant gardens to my left and dry hillside chaparral to my right. The sun is streaming in and we…
Drafting The word draft is one of those English words with not only multiple meanings, but the word takes the form of a verb, an adverb, an adjective and a whole array of nouns all at once . You can draft a draft of a proposal to draft a drafting specialist by sending him a draft as a down payment to help correct flaws of a drafty room before he or she gets conscripted in…
Double New Yorker I wish the New Yorker magazine treated its subscribers like American Express has chosen to, with a designation on the card that declares “Member Since 1976”. I must admit, I am proud of that designation. And here is the thing, in the forty-five years of my membership, I have never once not paid the AMEX bill in full every month. It used to be that there was no choice to do otherwise,…
The Door to the Castle I got a call today from my colleague Damiano from his home in Palermo, Sicily. He called to congratulate me on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamal Harris today and said that he and his family had watched the whole inauguration on live TV from their home overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea that lies between their home and the mainland of Southern Italy. I am very lucky to have hooked…
Green Acres When we think of the shift in American demographics from rural to urban, we generally think of the period from 1870 to 1920 even though that has been an inexorable trend over our entire history as a nation. We have gone from being 95% rural in Colonial days to being less than 20% rural in recent history. I’m sure we are all very aware of this trend, but what we may be less…
A Trip Down The Nile A few years ago I got it in my head that on the short list of places I wanted to go was to Egypt. I have fond memories of traveling to Egypt on a school trip in high school (keep in mind that I lived and went to school in Rome, which is only 1,300 miles from Cairo, a quick flight across the Med). Marc Antony was able to woo…
Terrorizing Myself These days, my morning protocol is to start by understanding what obligations for video calls or meetings I have in the early morning. That is a normal situation I imagine for many people who live on the West Coast since we are three hours displaced from New York and eight or nine hours offset from Europe. While I have done plenty of business with Asia over the years, my connections do not tend…