by admin | Sep 12, 2010 |
I was signing some Christmas cards last Christmas season and thought of the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year that we throw around so lightly, and started to wonder, as I often do, what do we really mean when we say Happy New Year. Certainly we don’t mean it as an adjective modifying the noun, because it’s non-sensical to think that something inanimate, such as a new year, can be happy. Everyone knows that only people or puppies can be happy. And I am happy. Flat out. No doubt about it. If you would have asked me, I may have had a hard time defining happiness or even why I am happy, but there you are, I am happy. Having gone this far, however, I...
by admin | Aug 26, 2010 |
The Great American Road Trip. Some do it out of necessity. Some do it for fun. We did it because, well, I think…..to tell the truth, I don’t really know why we did it. We had to get to Santa Fe to visit our dear friends, enjoy the cooler air and to eat and drink for free. Plus I’d had an itch for some time to visit Larry McMurtry’s eclectic group of used book stores in Archer City, Texas, and it was kind of (not really) on the way, so the car/road trip thing seemed to fit. That was before I got out the AAA and plotted out the route and mileage. I ignored the reality of a long trip through uninteresting topography and went with the fantasy of a...
by admin | Jul 17, 2010 |
Only just now has enough time passed that I can post this long awaited piece on the World Cup 2010. Well, it’s really not exactly about the World Cup, it’s more about soccer (football) in general. How, you might ask, do I know that enough time has passed? Easy….I no longer can remember who won. Actually I did remember that the Netherlands was in the final match, but I couldn’t remember their opponent. You, of course, remember that it was Spain who won by the typical score of one to nothing or one nil if you prefer the British articulation. And that’s part of the story. There are dramatically opposing positions on the relevance of an activity that...
by admin | Jul 12, 2010 |
Those of you who know me well know that in the last several years I have developed what might be called a morbid interest in obituaries. Get it….morbid…..obituaries. Sure you did. But I have, and I’ve come by this interest honestly not morbidly. Let me tell you why. Some time ago I was researching a piece that about military veterans of WWII. This research uncovered the fact that soon the last veteran will have died. As a result of that disconcerting bit of news, I started to look for obituaries of these veterans in the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times….the only two daily news publications that I can bear to read on a regular...
by admin | Jun 27, 2010 |
I’m always on somewhat shaky ground when I write about the natural world. Even though I’ve posted before on such disparate topics as dragonflies, pissants, skunks, monkeys, and, of course, birds, I’ve never tried to make anything coherent out of these separate natural elements. Recently, however, I’ve begun to contemplate the meaning of it all. By all, I mean how one bit relates to the other, and then another, and finally becomes a whole. Lately, S. and I have been rising early and spending time in the garden in the relative cool of the summer morning. It’s more or less mindless work. Pulling weeds, picking whatever needs picking and talking about how...
