The Mystery of Well-Being In November of 2020, as we were all hunkered down with our first winter of COVID and we were glad to be out of NYC and on our hilltop, I walked outside onto our deck after a particularly hard rain the day before and I suddenly found myself hip deep in my deck. I had most suddenly fallen through my deck just steps outside my Kitchen door. It was amazing that…
Zoo To You Too San Diego is nothing if not a Zoo town. We actually have what I would call two zoos here. They are both part of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the one is the world famous Zoo near Balboa Park in the middle of the city. The other is the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and it is very near where we live in Escondido. The main Zoo is 100…
And Tango Makes Three This morning I heard a very heart-warming story on the radio. It’s the story of a book banning. Apparently, a few years ago at the Central Park Zoo, there were these two chinstrap penguins that got particularly friendly and started living together, making a nest together. Their names were Roy and Silo. There was nothing terribly unusual about that except that they were both males. The zookeepers saw no harm in…
The Last 100 Days Presidential tenures are often defined by their first one hundred days. This tradition began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 and is the direct result of a comment he made in a speech to the nation right after his first 100 days. It therefore seems somehow fitting that the last 100 days of the Biden presidency (defined as the last 100 days before the election) would perhaps most define Joe Biden’s…
The Battle Begins This morning, after picking up bagels as per my usual Sunday morning chores, Kim and I took the kids and grandkids to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Our annual Zoo membership entitles us to four half-price tickets. Technically we were supposed to accompany the kids, but we drove two cars (technically a car and a truck) and took Buddy along for the ride and just dropped them off and skedaddled. It…
Good Old Joe If things don’t happen in the next day or two, we may have to stop saying that. I have turned myself into a pretzel as many of you probably have, trying to show the respect and support I think Joe Biden deserves for the job he has done as president, while considering our best prospects for avoiding the dreaded unmentionable. In 2016, when in theory he should have been the logical next…
Flowering Trees I have written before about my obsession with trees. There is just something comforting and stable about trees. They are big and lasting and weather most storms of any sort. I would suggest that bushes are fussy, but trees are regal. My favorite painting is of a tree on the pampas of Patagonia. I have planted eleven trees on my property in the past four years. They range from a very mature Irish…
Trump Nation I saw the newest cover of The New Yorker and it shows the seated picture of the Supreme Court with Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen, Ketanji Brown Jackson and then six identical scowling Donald Trumps. The cover article is titled “The Face of Justice” and even without reading the article, I pretty much know what it will say. Now I want to ponder the why of all of this. I have been quite outspoken…
Running and Swimming My daughter, Carolyn, who is spending the month of July with us here on the hilltop, is a marathoner. She has run nine NYC Marathons and countless half-marathons. Last year while she was here, she tried running in the neighborhood only to find it too hilly and too warm for her, so this year she has asked me to take her to the gym so she can run on the treadmills. The…
Hillbilly Nation You know where this is going more than I know where it’s going. I am perplexed and trying to make sense in the broadest possible way with the announcement that J.D. Vance is not only Donald Trump’s last-minute Vice Presidential pick, but that he has suddenly been elevated at age 39 to the national political stage and characterized by none less than Nate Cohn of the New York Times as the future leader…