The Picture of My Youth In a few hours from now, my old friend from high school, Tom Wohlmut will arrive for a two day stay with his wife Brenda as they make their way west from Santa Fe, heading for their new life in Australia. Tom is one of two friends I can say I have retained from my youth and I have many fond memories of our times together in Rome during our…
Turning Thirty Today is my youngest son’s birthday. He was born in 1995, so he is technically turning twenty nine today, but as we all know, that means he is starting his thirtieth year. I don’t know how much of a milestone that feels like to him, but it feels a bit like a milestone to me. Thomas was born in the middle of the decade of endless possibilities to me. I started the Nineties…
A Labor of Love Today is Labor Day, which has been a national holiday since 1894. Even though it falls 2-3 weeks before the formal calendar transition from summer to fall, America always considers it the end of summer and the start of “back-to-school” season. It’s one of these times when everyone seems focused on their business before the holidays kick in at the end of November. Strangely enough, the hardest working folks in my…
Apple Pie Today we are taking a mini roadtrip to Julian. Julian is a small alpine village set up in the Volcan Mountains, just southwest of the Pinyon Ridge where the Anza-Borrego Desert lives. It’s north of the Laguna Mountains which were the famous barrier to the railroad access to San Diego from the east. One of the things I like most about this area is the vast diversity of geography that exists and Julian…
Deadly Encounter I have just heard on the radio and read in Time Magazine about the West Nile and EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitic) viruses. It seems that in the Northeast, centered in Eastern Massachusetts, there has been an outbreak of these viruses that has caused some not-insignificant public health concerns. We are headed to Nova Scotia and the surrounding provinces in a few weeks and our friends Mike and Melisa are heading into new England…
Catching a Break It has been a very warm week here on the hilltop. Notice that I am saying warm and not hot. Because it has been dry, the warmth of the day has felt good and not bad or oppressive. Nonetheless, when I stopped by to see our friends Faraj and Yasuko yesterday, two people who seem always on the go and usually outside in the garden, they were hunkered in the house with…
The Art of Disparagement When you disparage someone, you are making false and injurious statements about something. Usually it refers to comments made about a business or product rather than a person directly. Directing such false and injurious comments against a person is called defamation and most often takes the form of libel (written or visual) or slander (spoken or audible). All of this specificity is intended to get to the bottom of the comments…
Death on the Hilltop No, no one has died…yet. Last night I got a strange email from someone I didn’t know. It began, “I haven’t met you yet, but I have been living in the neighborhood since 2013.” It was from a woman who claimed to be in our neighborhood and who was forwarding an email that had been sent a few weeks ago by her husband. It went on to say, “My husband realized…
The Fog Returns I am sitting here on my hilltop and see that I am surrounded by fog. Fog is a funny substance. On the one hand, it should be a welcome addition for purposes of the garden, giving everything a coating of its fine mist is a persistent and soaking way. I don’t know how much moisture plants get out of fog, but it seems like it would be good for them in its…
Life Is A Cabaret Kim has been singing and dancing her whole life. It is a very big part of who she is. When she has music to learn and arrangements to consider, she is at her happiest. SHe discovered cabaret as her medium of choice shortly after we got together in 2005, so it is safe to say she has been doing cabaret for about twenty years. While we lived in NYC she was…