One of the things that used to drive me crazy as a kid was that my parents would make promises to me and then not keep them. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t really see or understand the challenges they faced. I can recall one occasion when I was about thirteen when we had a terrible rainstorm and there was significant damage to the roof of our mountain cabin up in Wrightwood and to the surrounding property. So my parents submitted a claim on their homeowners insurance policy and, since my father would be doing most of the repair work himself, they promised me that some of the money would come my...

I have never been to a renaissance fair…excuse me…faire. You have to end that word with the required final “e” so you can make it look like Old English, not that anybody spoke Old English during the renaissance. As a matter of fact, they spoke what is called Middle English, which simplified the case endings of nouns inherent in Old English, aka Anglo-Saxon, and Proto Modern English, as spoken by Shakespeare and as used in the King James Bible. But I digress. I have never been to a renaissance faire, and neither has anyone else. Those events, no matter what they call them, don’t really...

Just for the moment, let us believe that in 2012, Barrack Obama wins another term for the office of president of the United States . And then let us assume that in a few months, as every other president has done, he sets about to fill positions for his cabinet and also hands out appointments for the various jobs in government that the president has the power to give. After all, that is how presidents have always rewarded their supporters. So you go up to Obama and request a government appointment. And when he asks why you should have the appointment, you tell him because you supported him. And...

Have you ever been separated from your companion or companions when you’ve been in some big store or at some incredibly busy place where there are a multitude of people in the crowd?  That’s happened to me a number of times.  And you never know whether you should just stay in one place and wait until they find you or if you should go off looking for them.  And inevitably, when you find them, you both start saying that you were looking all over for each other and where the hell were you?  I even wrote a poem about the experience once. When one has lost someone Should you stay In one place And...

I was teaching a history lesson yesterday to a bunch of ten year olds.  The lesson involved then President Andrew Jackson and the Cheyenne Indians.  For those of you who have forgotten your American history, here is a thumbnail version of what happened. The American government, as usual, wanted to …ahem…”acquire” the native Americans’ land.  Now we had a treaty with the Cheyenne that said they got to keep their land.  But now we wanted the land, so Jackson told them to vacate.  Instead of killing us, which is probably what the Indians should have done, they decided to play by our...

Paris would have to be my favorite city in the entire world. There are a lot of reasons for this. There’s the food of course, and the atmosphere. There are the small street cafes and the wonderful little neighborhoods, each with its own charm. There are the fabulous museums. And of course, there are the people. Paris was tailor made for a people watcher like me. But most of all, there is the architecture. Everywhere you look there are these amazing buildings. It almost doesn’t seem fair that so many wonderful buildings could all be in one city. I marvel at the Pantheon and the Le Opera. The...

I remember very clearly the first time I ever encountered a trick question. It was in the seventh grade. My history teacher was Mr. Byrd. I couldn’t stand him, really. He was an ultra conservative and often let us know his political opinions. I was, of course, a radical liberal (it being the 60s, but then I’m still pretty radical when you come to think of it). But being a thirteen-year-old, I couldn’t say anything because he was my teacher. So I had to sit there and listen to his right-wing claptrap and keep my mount shut. It was good training for the day I would have stupid bosses. Anyway,...

Back in 1980, I went back to college. Like a lot of folks, I went to college right after high school, took a bunch of classes, dropped a lot more, and then dropped out of school for a time. I had been offered a good job at more money than my father made, so I took it. But in 1980, after being asked to leave my home, and having been injured at work and fired, I decided I needed to acquire some new skills, so I went back to school. There was another reason I went back to school. I was trying to make time with a girl I had gone to high school with and reconnected with at the telephone store. Yes,...

At least once a year, one of the boys in my class gets in a fight with another boy. And when I set about to solve the problem, I usually ask the boys what happened. One boy accuses the other of hitting him, and so, fool that I am, ask the kid, “So, did you hit him?” And the young man will almost always answer that he did not. Then, usually, a chorus of voices from the class announces that the boy in question did, in fact, hit the other child. They saw it. And then the boy who at first denied hitting at all offers, “He hit me first!” And then I usually say something glib like, “Oh, I see....

There’s an old Japanese legend about a man who dies and finds himself in the afterlife. I wonder what the Japanese idea of the afterlife would be? Would Godzilla (Gojira, in Japanese) be there? Do gigantic prehistoric lizards have souls? It’s a mystery, my son. Anyway, I digress. This fellow finds himself in the afterlife and is being show around by his spiritual guide. There were beautiful estates and lush gardens all around. Finally, he comes to a room lined with shelves. And on the shelves were stacks and stacks of ears. The man asks what’s with all the ears, and his guide tells him that...