TO THE SMALL CATALOGUE OF meaningful three-word human phrases (“I love you,” “let me help,” “take your time,” “hold my beer”) should be added one pertaining to perhaps that oldest of motivations: “Let’s go see!” Mind you, this drive isn’t…
Category: Living
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
The harder it became, the more I wanted to do it.”
— Female round-the-world sailor, from the film MAIDEN
If church worked, you’d only need to go once.”
— Pastor Rich Gantenbein, a”h
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.”
— Salvador Dali
Pithyism #$$$
IN THE ABSENCE OF A national social-service corps, and for proper character-building, everyone should work in retail sales for a year. (Especially during the holiday rush.)
Pithyism #2=1
TRUE LOVE IS NOT AN emotion — it’s a dedicated series of related actions.
On “Secret Fame”
IN ANY HUMAN AFFINITY GROUP, of whatever size, there are always one or two people whom “everybody knows” — be it for their work, skills or sheer ubiquity. This is the concept of Secret Fame: celebrities of the specialty worlds…
On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)
IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate for me how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and…
Allegiance Redux
A FEW YEARS AGO, I revised the Pledge of Allegiance — instead of stating support for a piece of cloth, it celebrates what that cloth stands for. In today’s hyper-partisan political and cultural climate, it’s important to be both precise…
365 Names (sort of): The Fragility
“THIS IS WHY SOME PEOPLE drink,” I told my friend, provoking him into loud laughter. We were talking about THE FRAGILITY: that immediate realization of the tenuousness of life, and its property of drastically changing in a cold heartbeat through…
Open Invitation
THERE MAY BE NO QUICKER way to evoke reverent awe than by looking through a telescope at the night’s rich bounty. I was 13 when I first trained a small refractor, a gift from my parents, on the planet Saturn.…
Street Light (Fourth Indigent Sketch)
HE WAS A FLORID, BEEFY man in his mid-to-late 30s, perched on a high concrete bench in San Francisco’s lunchtime-crowded Justin Herman Plaza, and wearing a grey beltless trenchcoat tightly buttoned up to his thick neck. Every minute or so…