The Gaza Strip is a 140 square mile territory along the Mediterranean coast, bordered by Israel and Egypt. Its history stretches back thousands of years as part of various empires and civilizations. In modern history, after World War I, Gaza was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered Gaza while absorbing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, a diaspora that has since spread throughout the Middle East and…
Today I went for a very eventful personal appointment. When I moved here in 2020, I went about getting a California drivers license, which was not an easy feat in the midst of COVID. I finally got an appointment in the Temecula office of California DMV (Kim had to go all the way to Hemet to get her’s) once the DMV felt it was safe to reopen their offices to the public and re-expose their…
We are now just five days from the Trump inauguration, so the last bits and pieces of the Biden administration are winding down and preparing for the orderly transition of power to the new Trump team. The confirmation process for his cabinet has begun with the open Senate confirmation hearings on Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense being held yesterday. Full and complete partisanship was on display and much of the Hegseth dirty linen was…
Planning out the deconstruction of the Holidays is always an activity that defines the most fundamental of differences in people. I am a planner by nature and, of course, others are not. I am also a person of great focus, which is particularly necessary and valuable if you are also, as I am, a person who has many varied interests and preoccupations. As soon as the Holidays have passed their peak, I start thinking about…
We are closing in on a full week of being on tenterhooks. The phrase means to be in a state of anxiety, suspense, or painful anticipation. The expression comes from a very practical origin in the textile industry: A tenter was a wooden frame used to stretch woolen cloth after washing, preventing it from shrinking as it dried. The cloth would be attached to the frame using metal hooks (tenterhooks) to hold it taut. This…
Last night we rewatched a 2024 movie that we had seen, but which must not have left much of an impression on me since I was intrigued by the snippet of Prime that advertised it. The movie is called Lonely Planet and its about some people that go off to a writer’s retreat in Morocco. One of the attendees is Liam Hemsworth, younger brother of actor Chris. He is not a writer, but rather a…
Do you remember those scenes in the epic 1992 film, My Cousin Vinnie, written/produced by my friend Dale Launer, when freight trains rumble past his hotel night after night making him sit bolt upright? Well, I’ve found a spot where they could’ve filmed those scenes. There are three coast-to-coast Interstate highways in the United States: I-10: Running from Santa Monica, California to Jacksonville, Florida (the southernmost transcontinental route) I-80: Running from San Francisco, California to…
This is the year of Bob Dylan. The recent movie about his life and rise to fame, called A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, certainly has returned the iconic song writer to the front of our collective consciousness. Ive noticed that there are simply more stories, cartoons, articles all about Bob Dylan that are clearly a function of the new movie. His biggest songs were: Based on commercial success and cultural impact, here are some…
Last night I was at a dinner of a dozen of us from the neighborhood. I got a call from my sister, Barbara, who lives in Las Vegas. I ignored it out of phone politeness to those around the table. When the phone rang a second time I got up to answer it because you never know when an emergency might arise. She was calling to make sure we were OK based on what she…
There is an old joke that involves a guy who goes to Hell and is asked by Satan to choose his preferred poison. The first room is freezing cold with snow and ice all around and everybody in that room is shivering cold. The second room is your classic hellscape with fire and brimstone and everyone in that room is in agony as their flesh burns. In the last room, everyone is standing around in…