About a year into the Trump presidency, the level of anger and hatred in the United States was starting to get to me. I wanted to promote the idea of people talking respectfully to each other about issues instead of jumping straight to hatred and yelling. My wonderful partner surprised me one day with the gift of the… Read More »
Whether from living in the horror-show of 2020 or because of the recent death of my father, my thoughts have been tending recently toward deeper topics than usual. Lately I’ve been thinking abut the nature of consciousness. In that context, this quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth came up in a conversation the other day: Life is but a walking… Read More »
So, you’ve heard of Philip Glass and want more. The list of Glass compositions and performances is very long, so choosing what to listen to next is not a trivial task. I’m here to help. This post is a curated list of the approachable Glass pieces that I recommend for those just starting in their shiny new Glass obsession.
I was raised in a Conservative Baptist household. Christmas morning began with breakfast followed by a birthday cake with candles over which we sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. (Yes, I am completely serious.) I left the church as a young teen. Christmas is still a wonderful time of year, but I feel pretty vehemently that Jesus is not… Read More »
The other day I saw a huge, completely concentric, perfectly spiraled spiderweb right outside my kitchen window. In the center of this minor masterpiece was a large brown striped spider, hanging in the middle to wait for his prey.
I made many trips to Phoenix to see my dad over about his last five or so years. Combined with my business travel, I was spending too much time in the air. With another trip planned for May of 2018, I decided to stir things up and take the train instead of flying. I figured the 3-day trip… Read More »
In the nearly 20 years I’ve lived in this home, I’ve encouraged the moss in my Pacific Northwest suburban home to completely take over my lawn. Perhaps it is this, or the complete lack of herbicides, or perhaps just dumb luck — but my yard seems to provide the ideal growing conditions for mushrooms. Last year, when I… Read More »
2020 has been the year that everyone jokes can get no worse. Which of curse jinxed it.
Mother nature, or at least her complete schmuck of an illegitimate son Climate Change, decided to make things worse. Cue the weeks of soaring temperatures, add high winds, stir in a conflagration — and now much of the United States, especially the west, is on fire.
Like many people, I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. And that reason is … so you can use the experience to spark creative ideas. … so you can deepen your capacity for compassion. … so you can add to your catalog of experiences. … so you can appreciate the things you have. … so you… Read More »
My sister, Cindy, and I live on opposite ends of the country and rarely see each other. When my mother died in the Autumn of 2001, we each packed our bags and headed to Mom’s condo in Arizona. There we spent a week together to arrange and hold Mom’s memorial and to empty the place out. We needed… Read More »
Since I wrote a long post listing my favorite TV shows, I thought I’d follow that up with another source of my screen time: YouTube. While there are many other channels I turn to, this post lists the YouTube channels that I watch with some regularity. Here’s a list of the topics in case you want to skip… Read More »
My mind broke a little bit today. Unable to sleep in the wee hours this morning, I [foolishly] picked up my phone and was browsing through Facebook when I came upon a post that put into words something that I have very worriedly obsessed over for years. This thing has seemed so big, so unanswerable, that it has… Read More »
I used to treat this as a shameful secret, but a few years ago I came out with the truth: I love to watch TV. As apparently lots of folks have extra time on their hands [I started writing this up during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020], I thought this was a good time… Read More »
Recently I came across a document that is meaningful to me in several ways: the divorce document from January 1987 that finally ended my first marriage. As I held the papers in my hands, I smiled as it brought to mind something that, at first glance, seems unrelated.
A number of years ago, my brother and I were driving toward town in Ilwaco, Washington. It was a crisp early-Autumn morning, and the sun was positioned just right so that everything was backlit. Just as we pulled up to a stop sign, a bald eagle swooped low in the sky in front of our car.