Travel to Gravel It has just come to my realization that this was the day we were supposed to return from our big summer family trip to Krakow, Poland. I had rented a palace with fifteen rooms with separate baths for ten days, just twenty minutes from the Krakow. Joining us, much like at a Manor House in Western Ireland last summer, a Chateaux (castle) on the Cherbourg Peninsula in Normandy, in a series of…
Bob’s Your Uncle When I come up with a story title that is a familiar expression to me, given that I have now written and posted 652 stories on this blog, I like to check myself and make sure I haven’t already used the title once before. Yes, I have actually found myself doing that and I’m not embarrassed to say that. I consider it less about a failing memory and more about finding an…
We’re Having a Heat Wave There are many things to learn about life in retirement, life in Southern California and life in the mid-stage of the Western COVID resurgence. Let’s start with COVID. Life on the hilltop remains largely unchanged except that I am back to having Handy Brad wear a mask when we interact, less because of the resurgence and more because he flew to the belly of the beast in Dallas last weekend…
What Doesn’t Kill You… You know the rest of that expression. I suggest that we are living in a bimodal world right now where some things that don’t kill you do, indeed, make you stronger, and others that don’t kill you, make you weaker. After 650 blog stories in eighteen months, representing approximately 800,000 words or about nine books worth, I know a few things about my writing, which I now do every single day.…
Of Rocks & Trees and Citrus & Quail The world is in a funny place right now. I spoke to a friend of mine who lives in Vancouver. He reads my blog so I expect he will recognize himself. I recently called him. I spent four years on his board of directors. The company was a small public company traded on the LondonStock Exchange. We spent most of our time trying to figure out how…
Upbeat Yes, I read the monthly AARP newsletter. There, I said it and I’m proud of it. I always used the excuse that I consider myself a retirement professional since I taught a pensions course for ten years at Cornell and I wrote a book called The Global Pension Crisis in 2013, which got reasonably well-read and even cited academically in the field (my academic claim to fame). However, I also read the AARP newsletter…
Water, Water Everywhere Samuel Taylor Coleridge went on to say, “Nor any drop to drink”, in his famous The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner poem. It is the story told by a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage as told to a stranger wherein the tale rambles through all the sensations of storytelling by invoking exhilaration, danger, boredom, serenity, and abject feelings of doom. My last name always drew me to the…
Succulentamentality Succulence is said to be tender, juicy and tasty. But succor is about help when in distress, of military reinforcements and of giving aid especially to those who need it the most. The help it represents came from Latin, through French and into Middle English. Succulent plants are those which are engorged with water to last them for long periods of time in arid climates. They are by their very nature, drought resistant plants,…
The Spectrum of Life When I acquired my house in Ithaca twenty-four years ago (1996), it is fair to suggest that the technological world looked a lot different than it does today. Back then, the important elements to consider in a home were to have water, sewer, electricity, gas and telephone connectivity. The first four were easy since the United States had had a century of infrastructure roll-out that insured that most every place had…
Residentially Believable I have now been a California resident since February 4th at the very latest. I arrived here in my car on December 21, but was back in NYC in January for a few weeks while we wrapped up move-related logistics and closed-out our apartment. The movers finished up on February 3rd and the apartment was empty and broom-cleaned that night as we slept in the hotel next door. I surrendered my apartment keys…