A Visit From Betty I need to update everyone on Betty. Betty was Blind Betty, then Bling Betty and now she is just Betty. Betty can see again, sort of. We don’t know how long she was afflicted by blindness from cataracts, which we had removed. Her eyes were so messed up that during the surgery it was decided that removal of the cataracts would allow her to see distance, but she would never have…
PJ and the Bear In the Fall of 1971, I was just like every other schlubby Freshman at Cornell University, living in University Halls (U-Hall 4 to be precise, second floor, north wing) on West Campus. Those WWII-era cinderblock dorms were torn down and replaced by fancy new upperclassmen dorms bearing names like Hans Bethe House and Carl Becker Hall. I like to joke that instead of freshman yelling “Dorm 3 Sucks!” from the dorm…
Remote Fatherhood When psychologists plumb the depths of who we are they tend to use easy mechanisms like listing the things with which you might complete the sentence, “I am…..”. There are many things I can come up with to complete that sentence, but none is higher on the list than the answer “a father”. That doesn’t make me especially unique among men, but the priority I place on fatherhood as an institution is perhaps…
Sisters In my list of top five holiday movies is White Christmas with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Words almost can’t describe how evocative of the holiday season I find that movie. Perhaps it is because it was made in 1954, the year of my birth. Maybe the latent New Englander in me likes the setting in a quintessential Vermont inn waiting desperately for snow to make its Christmas season prosperous. I’ve…
The Cleaning Crews I have three crews of Hispanic (mostly Mexican in heritage, I believe) workers that do things around this household. I suspect I am like almost everybody here is Southern California to some degree or another and perhaps like lots of people all across the United States. Such is the nature of the Hispanic diaspora, it reaches to every corner as people just try to find a place to live a peaceful life…
Ringing in the New We are in the home stretch of the modern world’s annus horribilis. While we will soon be at the start of another year that will undoubtedly begin as badly as this one will end, we are all hopeful that over the course of the twelve months of its duration, 2021 will somehow work its way out of this malaise and resolve itself into a fine year. For that to be the…
The Moment of Truth Tonight I am watching the Netflix series The Crown, a series I have watched off and on for most of this year. I am not sure what attracts me to watching the story of the Windsor clan over the course of the Twentieth Century, but it does interest me for some reason. I think that I have taken up the series again at this point because of the controversy over the…
Consensus Construction I have gotten myself into a funny place…again. That funny place has to do with my deck renovation project. This is unlike any other project I have undertaken before. The fundamental reason is that I probably have too much time on my hands. Precisely speaking, I have both the time and am home-bound by COVID like we all are. That is proving to be a very expensive combination. I write 1,200 – 1,400…
A Wave to The Promised Land Of all the personal entertainment activities I could have during a pandemic, I suspect that motorcycling is one of the best under the circumstances. Yes I like riding with my pals of the AFMC and I like it when Kim chooses to ride pillion with me, but I have always been content with riding solo and just enjoying the road and the ride. I imagine that comes from my…
Irresponsibility On Friday, I was in the second day of the administratively enforced blackout (as in total grid shut-down) from our local utility. The cause (excuse?) was the Santa Ana wind and its harsh dry gusts that could easily induce a wildfire that could quickly get out of control and create a liability for said utility. I had had the foresight to anticipate the possibility of this situation earlier in the year and put my…