Basalt and Pepper Ever since those delivery guys from the patio furniture store broke my lovely, but apparently delicate, fountain and I had to replace it with something else they had on their lot (less because they refused to refund my money and more because I was anxious to install my fountain), I have been less than thrilled with my garden fountain situation. I had a wandering fountain eye right from the start and occasionally…
Lunch With Marissa I feel a bit like I am over-telling the story, but nonetheless I want to describe my lunch yesterday with my new-found half-sister Marissa. To begin with, we agreed to meet in Pasadena, so that choice deserves some attention since it seems to govern a great deal of my travel decisions here in Southern California. My main driving objective when heading north is to avoid Los Angeles traffic at all costs. While…
Losing Friends I may have mentioned along the way that I have moved primary residence twenty-three times in my life. That averages to a tad more than two years in a residence. While that average appropriately characterizes my high level of movement over my life, the three longest stays in one place were nine years in the South Street Seaport (where I met Kim), seven years on Canterbury Road in Rockville Centre (where my two…
Searching for Andre When I arrived at college as a Freshman (attending Cornell University, my mother’s Alma Mater located in Ithaca, New York), I was seventeen and had arrived via a hitched ride from Cleveland, Ohio. I had been in Cleveland working for the summer as a sociology research assistant at Case Western Reserve University and my mother was on an extended business trip to Colombia from our regular home at the time in Rome,…
The Mulch of Life I’ve gotten through my life very nicely without mulch up until now. You may recall that last year I made the logical, but ill-conceived decision to hire a horticulturalist for an advisory session. The cost of the advice was about the same as two days worth of hard garden work by Joventino or his father Benito. It turned out to be worth considerably less, 30% because of the extremely hard-working nature…
Becoming Emodiverse OK, I presume you are like me and had never heard the term emodiverse. We all understand how important diversity is, right? Well, its not just culture and ecology that require diversity. Our emotions apparently also need a degree of diversity to be the healthiest they can be. The simplest way to think about this is that we need some bad times to fully appreciate the good times. The same is true of…
Girding Your Loins The expression is more interesting than you may imagine. Whenever I heard the expression I assumed that it referred to the fact that before going into battle, an ancient warrior would wrap his legs to the top of his legs to protect the soft underbelly of his body, It is strange that man, the most advanced species, chose to become bipeds when the mere act of walking erect exposed frontally the softest…
Slowing Down Everything is slowing down, so why aren’t I? Last year the politics was running hot and heavy in the run-up to the election. Joe Biden was on the ropes and it was unclear who would emerge as the Trump-killer. Every day there was excitement about what that idiot Trump had done lately and what his tweets were lying about. The Pandemic alone was a full-time job keeping up with events. We had just…
Door to Door on DST We have been having an uncharacteristically cold week here in sunny San Diego. Between that and the intermittent rain over the last week, I am reminded that the nice weather we usually enjoy is truly a blessing. I guess this is how we learn to appreciate what we’ve got, or at least what we usually got. The clocks changed yesterday as we moved to Daylight Savings Time. Spring forward and…
Letting the Sun Shine Kim and I sit on the sofa most nights while the afternoon turns to evening, listening to the day’s news and wondering about the state of the world. The current debate playing out on the national stage seems to be focused on whether government is an instrument of good or bad. Are we in 1930 and in need of the helping hand of FDR, or are we in 1980 when Reagan…