The Old Lone Ranger

The Call of the Desert

By Rich Marin | January 15, 2026 by Rich Marin

The Anza-Borrego Desert “superbloom” is a spectacular wildflower phenomenon that occurs in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Southern California, typically between late February and April. A superbloom happens when an unusually large number of wildflowers bloom simultaneously across the desert landscape, transforming the normally brown and sparse terrain into vibrant carpets of color. This requires a specific combination of conditions. First and foremost, there must be adequate winter rainfall, generally at least 3-5 inches between…

Reinventing Myself

By Rich Marin | January 14, 2026 by Rich Marin

For the better part of fifty years, my career was a moveable feast with me doing different things every few years. For many of those years this was not of my doing, but rather a function of moving where I was asked to go and doing what I was asked to do. Early on I adopted a persona of someone who liked new challenges and embraced change and that image became who I was. I…

Business Advice Memoir

The Pro and Con of Normal

By Rich Marin | January 13, 2026January 11, 2026 by Rich Marin

I spend a lot of time going back and forth about whether I like excitement or calmness in my life. I can’t tell if I feel more this way about life than others, but I certainly expect that I am not alone in this quandary. When things are too exciting, I yearn for stability and normalcy and when things get too normal, I get bored and start seeking out excitement. Sound familiar? If I broaden…

Memoir Retirement

Perfect Weather

By Rich Marin | January 12, 2026 by Rich Marin

There’s a lot to love about Southern California and every once in while even she surprises you with a gift. For the next seven days, I see that the weather forecast says that the average high temperature will be 75 degrees, the emoji attached indicates sunny skies and there is 0% chance of any rain with humidity running at about 20-25%. I’m not sure that it gets much better than that. This pattern was supposed…

Memoir Politics

Civil Fear

By Rich Marin | January 11, 2026 by Rich Marin

A few days ago we had a very galvanizing event occur in this country. As most of us have seen in various videos, there was an ICE raid of some sort under way in Minneapolis. The scene was on a snow-covered suburban street where a maroon SUV driven by a 37-year-old white suburban mother was sideways in the street, somewhat blocking oncoming traffic. It is relatively clear that the car was purposefully positioning itself as…

Business Advice Memoir Retirement

My Work Struggle

By Rich Marin | January 10, 2026January 10, 2026 by Rich Marin

I turn 72 in a few weeks and I’ve been living out here for six years, which means I’ve been retired for at least five years. Retirement is one of my favorite topics to write about for some reason, and always has been since I started writing for fun forty years ago. I am not sure where this obsession with retirement comes from, but it probably originated just about forty years ago when I took…

Memoir

Cloud Dreams

By Rich Marin | January 9, 2026January 7, 2026 by Rich Marin

For some reason, over the last few days, Kim and I have been noticing the cloud formations surrounding our hilltop. I cannot say that they are dramatically different than they’ve ever been, but sometimes we just take note of their beauty and vastness that much more. I have always had a thing about clouds. I first noticed my attraction to them when I was in Ninth Grade, in my one year at prep school at…

Love Memoir

Theo the Golden

By Rich Marin | January 8, 2026January 5, 2026 by Rich Marin

Not long ago, I was reading the Washington Post and an interesting article caught my eye. It was a story about an unknown author who self-published a book only to have it turn into a blockbuster success. I wrote my first book in 2013. My friend David Taggart (rest his soul), acted as my unofficial agent and sent a summary of a project about the pension market to the biggest academic publisher. They came back…

Memoir Retirement

Mad Muscles

By Rich Marin | January 7, 2026 by Rich Marin

I am totally into my fitness program now and I’m really glad to say that none of it is linked to any New Year’s resolutions. In fact, the only New Year’s resolution that I made this year was not to make any New Year’s resolutions. My success rate with them in the past has been 0%, so I wanted to avoid confusing myself and my intentions with some flaky cultural norm of thinking that starting…

Fiction/Humor Memoir

Deconstructing the Holidays

By Rich Marin | January 6, 2026 by Rich Marin

We all understand that while the Christmas tradition of gift-giving is most closely linked to the legend of Santa Claus, the origin of the story dates back to St. Nicholas of Myra, a Christian bishop in Myra (modern-day Turkey). A few years ago, on our motorcycle trip through Turkey, we actually stopped in Myra and stood beneath his statue, so I can say I’ve been to the real North Pole. St. Nicholas was known for…

SUBSCRIBE!