I seem to spend so much time thinking about death lately. I was absolutely gobsmacked yesterday when I IMed an old friend to get an update on her health — she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer less than two months ago — and the reply came from her sister that she had died Saturday. Apparently …
Two stories in memory of my good friend Christine Read More »
Once in a while, news comes out of nowhere to shock you. That happened to me just 15 minutes or so. It isn’t that the news itself was so shocking, but the timing sure was. Less than two months ago, an old friend who I hadn’t seen in person for 50 years, messaged me on …
I have written many times on the subject of how much I admire my daughter Pauline. She has combined a wonderful career in the Foreign Service with a successful family life, difficult but hardly rare. But there is something she has been doing for years that I have never seen anyone else do. Before I …
The highlight of a movie actor’s life is winning an Academy Award. For most, it’s a one-time thing if they manage to win one at all. Some one-time winners are flukes, while others are older actors who finally win one near the end of their careers. Henry Fonda was in 126 movies and finally won …
I got an unpleasant little surprise a few minutes ago. For the last few weeks, Donald Trump has been lying about how tariffs against Chinese goods will raise trillions of dollars of Chinese money and pay for any government programs anyone could want. I would like to believe he doesn’t umderstand tariffs. That would at …
Eight inches of rain? Well, actually 7.9, but that is still one helluva lot of water coming down here in a 48-hour period. When my wife and I were thinking about moving east from California 15 years ago, she had some requirements as far as the climate. No hurricanes or tornados, no flooding and no …
Is dementia hereditary? I am 81 days from my 75th birthday and today I Googled that particular connection for the first time. It just wasn’t something that had concerned me until today. Part of it might have been thinking it could never happen to me and part of it might have been the though that …
“Some folks need killin’.” Every time I think the Republican Party can’t possibly sink any lower, someone like Mark Robinson comes along. Robinson is the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, and on the face of it he would appear to represent solid racial progress in the Tar Heel State. After all, it was only 34 …
Has Donald Trump gone around the bend? His latest comment about California’s water problems might be the craziest statement ever made in an American presidential campaign. I suppose it’s possible he will somehow claim it’s a joke, that he was using his genius brain to make some sort of point, but don’t believe it. Trump …
The early 1970s was such a wonderful time for music. The ’60s was the era of rock groups, from the Beatles to the Doors to the Beach Boys to the Kinks and many others and the late ’70s was the era of the abomination we call disco. But the period from 1971 to the middle …
