THE BEST YOUTHFUL HANGOUTS MAKE deep, lifelong memories — especially after they’re gone. Among our local, accessible, destinations in the late 1970s/early 1980s were those we called “The Bin,” “The Corridors,” “The Nuclear Plant” and “The Structure.” (Another, “The Twilight…
Category: Living
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
AND SO, EARTH CONTINUED TO shake off the irritants that had plagued her since the rise of the Industrial Age…”
— Barbatus the Elder
Disposathon!
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE: IT IS easier to get rid of everything in one big purge than a few things in a bunch of smaller ones. The time: June 1985. Hopped-up on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and The Dharma Bums,…
Boulevard of Broken Animals
FIRST, THERE WAS THE ONE-legged California towhee. She didn’t actually start out as one-legged. But when we first noticed her in the backyard, one of her legs was badly withered. It eventually dropped off. We named her “Tikvah” — Hebrew…
The Mask by the Side of the Road
SONOMA IS A SMALL TOWN: small enough to be intimate, but also large enough to have its share of common human misbehaviors. Take the occasional gutter-detritus. The first time I saw an empty bottle dumped near a Sonoma curb by…
The World’s Greatest Hiccough Cure
THIS METHOD OF QUIETING DIAPHRAGMATIC spasms was gifted to me by the remarkable Ann Autumn, one of my favorite teachers and a good person to have at your back. It is simply this: 1. Fill a glass with water. 2.…
The road to a friend’s house is never long.”
— Dave Chavoya
Why I Love: My Dad
IT’S HIS CONTAGIOUS JOIE DE vivre. It’s his insistence that I watched Sgt. Bilko, Jack Benny and Ernie Kovacs reruns with him when I was a kid. It’s the skiing memories. (It’s also the memories of the Plymouth, New Hampshire…
Hatch ’em, match ’em, dispatch ’em.”
— My friend, the Rev. JT, deconstructing pastors’ duty toward their flock
5 Thoughts: Pattern Matching
1. THERE ARE TWO TORAH STORIES which have troubled me for some time. 2. The first is about the giving of the Ten Statements (AKA the “Ten Commandments,” but “statements” is closer to the actual Hebrew). What should have been…
Minute Mitzvah: Play Nice
Today: Don’t shame anyone. Explanation: When you make someone feel painfully self-conscious, you destroy a little piece of the world — and not only for them. Your own soul / psyche / personality suffers as well. In today’s hyperpartisan social…
Hunkerin’
THE PHRASE OF THE DAY — let’s face it, of the hour (or even minute) — is “an abundance of caution.” As I write this, I am anticipating a shelter-in-place order for my county (Sonoma) to begin today. No telling…