The Great American City If someone asked me what TV show was the first to make an impression on me, I would have to say it was a toss-up between Gunsmoke (started as radio in 1952, then TV from 1962-1975), Have Gun Will Travel (radio and TV from 1957-1963) and Bonanza (TV from 1959-1973). All westerns, which remains the true and original American art form when it comes to TV in my estimation. Last year…
Ought v. Naught The Songs One of the ways we most often communicate from our hearts is through song. The oral history of humankind is deeply rooted in the ballads that talk of deeds and dreams that reflect what we feel ought to be. One of the funniest bits ever performed was The Two Thousand Year Old Man done by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. In it, Reiner asks the two thousand year old man…
Old Guys Walking It’s 7:30 AM on a Tuesday morning in late September and Kim and I are heading north along the California coastline to visit with our friends from Sonoma with whom we are going up even further north to Mendocino for a couple of days. I woke up about an hour ago, which is my habit, and decided that based on the amount of travel we have today to get to Sonoma from…
Ought v. Naught The Films As I said in our defining manifesto, we feel that the “ought” in our view originates in the heart and only partially in the brain. My pal, Tom, as a video storyteller, thinks that while it’s great to review the documents I’ve recently reviewed, his thought is that we are more likely to find the “oughts” in many of the movies we all so love. The themes of justice, love,…
The Fears of the Aged The older I get the more fearful I get. There was a time, not so long ago, after I had looked into the abyss of a career debacle, when I thought to myself that there really was nothing short of a random bear attack that would scare me. There is a bit of humor in the fact that my worst career debacle was while being the CEO of Bear Stearns…
Ought v. Naught The Founding Documents The “Other” Amendments The United States Constitution clearly defined the amendment process because the Founding Fathers understood that any sustainable governing document would have to be a living document that could get changed and updated as needed to meet the changing times. As such, Article 5 of the Constitution establishes that the Constitution can be amended following certain procedures including obtaining a super-majority (⅔) of Congress and 75% ratification…
Pitching Pups Now that we are in September, it seems to be time to get back into the gardening business I around the hilltop. Springtime seems like an obvious time for planting and growing things, but the autumn is not so intuitive. If I lived in the Northeast, autumn would be a time to prepare plantings for the harshness of winter, but this is San Diego, where the harshest month of December has an average…
Ought v. Naught The Founding Documents The Bill of Rights The Bill of Rights is the name given to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments were the direct result of the anti-federalist sentiments held deeply by many of the new citizens of the union that were still stinging from the overbearing control on them by what they considered the oppressive rule of the British Crown. They spring from the battle for…
Losing a Lime I just read in the Wall Street Journal that researchers have been working to understand why the average human brain has been shrinking in the last millennia or so. There is an old joke about the dinosaur speaking at a convention of other dinosaurs. He says to the group, “The outlook is not good gentlemen, meteors have been striking the earth, the climate is changing for the worse, vegetation is disappearing…and we…
Ought v. Naught The Founding Documents The United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land and represents a refinement in the Founding Fathers’ thinking over a dozen or so years. It was published in 1789 and replaces the Articles of Confederation published in 1777. Those articles represented the first, loosely defined combination of what had been thirteen disparate colonies, and it was a stepping stone for this…