Home Ownership They say that pride of ownership means everything and I sometimes understand that and at other times ponder its wisdom. It has always appealed to me to think that this life is all about dust to dust and that in the long run, none of us own anything other than the love we give and the love we take with us. Everything else is flotsam and jetsam. I know that some families like…
A Fortnight of Sunlight Twenty years ago, Peter Mayle and his wife spent a year “retiring” from their overcast British lifestyle (he had been a British Mad Man) by buying and renovating a house in Provence. He was already a writer, but his best-selling book A Year in Provence established him at a late stage in life (his 60’s) as a prominent and popular writer. I both loved the book and loved the whole romantic…
Homeward Bound My hone out here in San Diego got its name from my favorite movie. I used to have mixed feelings about naming my homes because it seemed pretentious and very egotistical. But then I came to make my peace with the issue on the theory that these homes were all about family to me and the ability to gather with them and lend them to them and even host my close friends. So…
This Little Piggy Stayed Home Today, like most days, I called up Jeff to see what was going on in his life. I am in the habit of calling Jeff every day for several reasons. First of all, he’s one of the few men of my age that I know around here, second, he is generally my go-to guy for stuff around the house because he knows the house and he is generally a font…
The Great Energy Mystery As I have explained, my day job is building a company involved in scientific R&D to develop an efficient green hydrogen synthesis system using the latest in proton-conducting ceramics. I like joking that what “Plastics” was to The Graduate and what Silicon is to the Bay Area and electronics, ceramics will be to the new Millennium. Its quite flippant of me as a non-scientist to say this, but if something that…
As the World Turns Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, the highly respected organization and policy think tank, has held that position for the past dozen years. He has now written a book called The World: A Brief Introduction. This book is described as a primer on the global era we live in from COVID-19 to terrorism and gives us a basic understanding of the dynamics that have in the past…
Gigging I alternate in thinking that I am on overload one minute and on pause the next. As soon as I find myself thinking that my situation is unique and a direct outgrowth of my own choices and circumstances, I read something or see something on cable news that makes me see people talking about exactly the same syndrome. Let’s think for a moment about that all-important baseline. My baseline is that I am 66…
Conquering Paradise It’s Monday morning and another great day in Paradise. Yesterday I started watching the 1992 movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise with Gerard Depardieu. I was prompted in that direction by a National Geographic article on a great new Mayan (more likely Toltec) artifact find in Chichen Itza in the middle of the Yucatán jungle. That reminded me of the Mel Gibson directed film Apocalypto about a manhunt by tribal people though the jungle.…
Keeping Busy Yesterday, Kim and I made the trip from our home to Ventura, which, for those not familiar with California geography, is 175 miles north of here on the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. I had ordered that new motorcycle seat for the new bike and I didn’t want to trust or suffer the over-burdened package delivery services since I had to both get my new seats and drop off my old seats…
Donut Holes I can tell that this quarantine has gone on too long or at least long enough. It’s been seven weeks by my count and any way you slice it, that’s a long time to be at home. The problem is, I can’t reasonably expect any sympathy for that since the entire world considers staying at home the least troubling of the three choices. The first choice is to be sick with COVID-19 and…