The Path To Enlightenment We spent the day doing errands and driving around with MSNBC on full blast. When we were home we were glued by eye or at lest ear to the TV and cable news. The path to political enlightenment just happens to wander through the land of the pundits and pollsters and even if we didn’t care for MSNBC, which we do, we would have to be tuned into Steve Kornacki and…
A Mitzvah For Mary Growing up in Latin America and then Wisconsin did not give me much opportunity to meet Jewish people. Strangely enough, my first Jewish friend was Michael Feldman, who I met when we moved to Poland Spring, Maine. South-Central Maine is more like Appalachia than the typical postcard of Bar Harbor. Michael was there because his grandfather Saul owned the Poland Spring Resort, one of the oldest resorts in America, dating back…
Brad Moon Rising I have now given Handy Brad eight months of more or less continuous employment. Assuming an average 35 hour per week, that means I practically have had a full-time staff member most of the year to help me with my projects around the house. Those have included re-stuccoing the back side of the house and deck, re-flashing the deck, power-washing the entire house’s stucco, replacing the utility room outer doors, building concrete…
On The Precipice This morning as the sun rises once again through my live oak, I find myself wondering what’s next. What do you call pre-postpartum? For one reason or another, things have stacked up around here with an end-date of mid next week. The obvious event is the Tuesday national election that has been the subject of all of our viewing pleasure and speculation for the better part of two years now. And yet…
The Long Haul We are settling in here on the hilltop. It’s been ten months now and while it is a bit arbitrary, I suppose that at one year we can declare this as home sweet home. All my life, through fully twenty-seven addresses I have called home, I have been forced by repetition to settle in quickly wherever I have gone. Kim knows that I want pictures on the wall on day one. That’s…
Planning to Plant People are amazed that I have gotten into gardening as I have. I do not find it so amazing, but rather somewhat predictable. While I have owned sixteen homes in my lifetime, three have been apartments in NYC (one with a large terrace that I planted and then replanted by my own design), nine have been vacation homes (two in the Hudson Valley, one in the Hamptons, five for skiing in Utah…
Feel-Good I’ve had a few things wrap up in the last few days and with completion comes evaluation and feedback. When I was in the thick of my working career (actually the relatively early days since I was only just under ten years in), I ran a Division that had use of a company car that I would occasionally drive home for the night. We did not have a full-time parking space, but could keep…
A Peak Under the Covers Sometimes I jot down a title that grabs me and then I go back later to write the story that came to mind for which the title was intended. Every once in a while, I get caught up with life and I forget to write the story and the thought evaporates, leaving the title staring me in the face with no idea what I wanted to write about. And then…
Workaholistic Repose Fixation on retirement seems to take three forms from my observation. The first is the most obvious that people who are looking forward to retiring are usually very fixated on the financial preparation for the blessed event and all the lifestyle issues associated therewith. Finding that perfect spot with the right weather to suit your temperament and presumably the right pace and proximity to civilization to fit your expectations of how you will…
Time Warping The folks at 23andMe always like to surprise me about what they can give me for value added from one little swab of spit taken from me several years ago (probably three or four years). They are regularly using my chromosomal blueprint to cross-reference me to new and distant members of my family that I have little or no interest in connect with. But they also like to make observations about my lifestyle…