Some years back during a holiday visit, after several hours of hurtling titles about and filling out a spreadsheet, my family and I came up with the following list of classics: our list of books to read to have a good sampling of cultural literacy.
This is my list of recommended fiction. There are a great many more fiction books that I really enjoy, but this is a list of the books that go beyond mere enjoyment: these are the books that delighted me now or in the past, that I have been drawn to read multiple times, or books that I found to be profound in one way or another.
We finally escaped the burbs! Here’s a quick update with lots of pictures of the new place in Clatskanie.
I have spent the last ~30 years with a Philip Glass playlist that shuffles nearly every track from all the Glass CDs I own. But I have a confession to make…
My next trip was also the longest way from home: Auckland, New Zealand. As usual, I planned to arrive a few days early, both to give myself a chance to acclimate to the time zone and to play tourist.
I have many email addresses. It was up to seven for a while there, but now I’ve got it down to a more manageable four. With all these email addresses, I sort through an awful lot of spam, much of which is from scammers who want nothing more than for me to click a link or open an… Read More »
My travel advice used to be to pack using a carry-on size bag, but then check it so you don’t have to deal with it at the airport or have to worry about space in the overhead bins on the plane. I’ve had to fine-tune this advice.
In November I headed to Athens, Greece, for client meetings. The meetings were shortened after I’d already bought my plane ticket, so I made plans to spend that extra time in central Athens as a tourist.
For my first international trip since the Covid shutdown, I was heading to the Netherlands for a few days of meetings. I decided to extend the trip a bit by taking a two-day detour on the way to visit my daughter, Laura, in London.
Back in the olden days, the NYC skyline featured the two towers and 9/11 was simply an obnoxious fraction and not the source of so much fear and dismay. Many things in our world changed as a result of 9/11, and one of them was the erasure of airport gate greetings.
My first time back on a plane since the coronavirus travel hiatus was my November 2021 trip to a St. Louis trade show. However, it is this trip to Boston that marks my true return to the business-travel way of life.
We have always lived in a world in which being around other people involves risk of catching something: a cold, the flu. But now that Covid is in the world, the chances of catching something are higher and the ramifications are potentially worse.
Covid can result in cognitive declines, and it’s not known how long these impacts last. Add to that the potential tripling of the risk for Alzheimer’s and more, and what we have here is a very strong argument for saying NO (or Not Yet) to “going back to normal.”
Ah, our beloved Long Beach wetland. We were looking so forward to making this our home, but our plans changed: We sold the lot.
It was through my appreciation of Philip Glass well into my adulthood that I was exposed to the music of David Bowie. A few of Bowie’s iconic works formed the inspiration of some of my favorite Glass pieces. …