In recent weeks, many people have been losing friends, questioning their friends’ morals, or finding their friendships strained because friends are taking social distancing less seriously than they are."Friends Are Breaking Up Over Social Distancing" Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic, April 2020 The excellent Atlantic article quoted above is about how people are ending friendships over… Continue reading The Coronavirus and Friendship
I listen to a lot of podcasts these days. Even shows that are shows meant for radio, such as most NPR podcasts, are podcast-ified radio shows. "This American Life," "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," Alex Baldwin's "Here's the Thing" are all radio shows that also have a supporting podcast. But I don't listen to the… Continue reading The Hardest Thing about Growing Older
The mind is an interesting thing. The other day BTO's "Blue Collar" popped up on my Spotify Discover playlist. This is a song that I love, and I hadn't heard it in years. The song reminded me of a similar song that my stepfather, Larry Steely, turned me onto and which came out around the… Continue reading The Chain of Memory
It is a cliche to say that music touches the soul, but what can I do? It does. Most of the time, though, we know why it does. I am a huge fan of Beethoven. To me, Beethoven is proof of the divine: no mere chance could have Beethoven composing The Ninth Symphony even though he was… Continue reading And a Bang on the Ear
My wife has been gone for six months now. Conscious magical thinking has turned into internalized magical thinking. Early on, it was as if she was just in the other room, or was on vacation and would walk back into the house at any time. I knew this was not correct, of course, but the feelings were… Continue reading I Still Have Her Meds
[Ed. Note: I wrote this while on a flight home from Milwaukee five years ago today, back when I returned to consulting for a living. Business consulting means you must travel to clients since they will not come to you. Clients want you to come to them, but generally will not foot the bill for anything… Continue reading A Rant on Airline Travel
My wife's kidneys failed when she was a teenager, and therefore she was getting hemodialysis for a good part of her life. The kidneys filter the blood to remove excess fluid and a wide variety of toxins. Hemodialysis replicates some of the kidney's function when a person's kidneys fail. In hemodialysis, your blood is cycled… Continue reading Dialysis Blood
Recently, the NPR show Planet Money had an episode about Edward Thorp, the man who invented blackjack card counting. Thorp is a mathematician, and he saw blackjack as an interesting problem to analyze as opposed to a way to get rich quick. At the time he discovered card counting, the established idea was that there… Continue reading Denied!
When I was a teenager, we had a neighbor next door who lived in the same house since the mid-1930s. She had a sister who was a pack rat, and subscribed to magazines and news papers, and never threw them away. Rather, she put them in the garage. After fifty years of this, the garage was full. Since… Continue reading We See Dead People
The first snow in Central Oregon was December 5th. I live in Sisters, near Bend, and we are in the high desert. The dry, cold air makes for nice powdery snow. The snow was beautiful! I was prepared: I bought a new set of snow tires for my four-wheel-drive F150. The truck even with regular… Continue reading Beautiful Disaster
Indelible Mark 