Dismantling a Heritage When people ask me where I am from, my answer depends on the context of that particular exchange. If I am sitting having a long conversation with someone, I explain that I grew up all over the world and that there are parts of me that started in Venezuela and Costa Rica, wound their way through all of the major parts of the United States from California to the Midwest to the…
Let ‘Em All Go To Hell Except Cave 76 Do you remember comedy albums? I guess they have been replaced by Comedy Podcasts or Sirius Comedy Radio or maybe the regular Comedy Central not-so-special Specials. Like a good cartoon in my youth that got played over and over again to our glee (Beep! Beep!), where the themes were simple and easy to grasp and the key to most of the humor came in the repetition…
Paging Doctor Cohen with an Assist by Cliff Davis We are spending the weekend at Camp Davis on Lake Ariel in the Poconos, the lovely vacation home of our dear friends Cliff and Linda. I met Cliff and Linda fifty-one years ago on the second floor of University Halls Dormitory number Four (called U-Hall 4 by its denizens). The greatest difference between this U-Hall and the other five identical cinderblock post-WWII buildings was that unlike…
Forbidden Fruit There are certain topics that we all want to avoid. It is not about polite company, it is about a thorny ethical conundrum that has no easy answers. We all like certainty whenever we can get it, and what that means is that where there is no certainty there is angst. Very few topics I can think of are as fraught with uncertainty as much as the topic of abortion is. We hang…
Ten-Digit Dialing I got an interesting notice yesterday from my mobile phone service provider, which happens to be Spectrum (since they offer the Verizon system without the added Verizon cost structure and smarmy, cheating ways as documented in previous stories). The notice was intended for their customers to inform them that from now on there is no such thing as “local calling” and that all calls must heretofore be placed with a full ten-digit number…
The Dead Never Call Yesterday, while driving from Kansas City to Kim’s home town of Wabash, Indiana, I got an email from an old business school pal, Bob. To be fair, Bob has actually been more than a B-school pal, but that is where I first encountered him. I went to business school directly from undergraduate. I took several courses in the last semester of my senior year and then managed to get enough courses…
Big Tree I have written many times about my fascination with trees. Last year I read (or more accurately, listened to) several books about trees and their hidden lives through their root systems and through the fungi that help them communicate with one another. I also recently wrote about hiring a local Consulting Arborist to advise me about my various trees on my property and how best to care for them. I only had him…
Getting Out of Dodge Today we drove from Gallup, New Mexico to Dodge City, Kansas on our way to Kansas City tomorrow. You all remember Dodge City with Marshall Matt Dillon (James Arness), Doc (Millburn Stone), Chester (Dennis Weaver) and Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake) with her Long Branch Saloon. You might also remember the scruffy guy who seemed like a town bum, but would occasionally get deputized. That was Festus (Ken Curtis), who was not…
Rejection Angst Many of us guys have had a lifetime of experience with rejection and should presumably be somewhat immune to it as we reach our retirement years. Not really. It’s not that I fear rejection or anticipate it and thereby avoid situations where it might arise, but when it finds its way to me, I simply don’t like it. Who would? But I keep thinking that I am past needing external validation, and that…
Father’s Day Technically and even though it has been celebrated in other forms since the Middle Ages, Father’s Day was first celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June in 1910. At 112 years old, the celebratory day still remains three years behind the recognition of Mother’s Day, which began in 1907. But officially, it wasn’t really nationally established until 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson made an official proclamation as to its…