I’m a prisoner of Covid-19.  Are you a prisoner, too?  Oregon, my home state, is doing a miserable job of keeping the number of viral infections down.  Maybe your state is the same. In any case, for the past few months, we Oregonians have been required to wear masks in public and

A month or two before Christmas last year, (2019) I walked through the local mall in search of children’s gifts for charity. About a third of the stores had gone out of business. Too many people were avoiding crowds and shopping on the internet. The two toy retailers that had existe

If my memoir ever finds an agent and is published, readers  who buy the book will journey back to the 1960s, joining my travel adventures throughout Europe and Africa.  I spent nearly 4 years wandering the planet and found the experience freeing.  Existing as a stranger in a strang

Predicting the future is difficult because it’s hard to assess how much “nostalgia” from the present or the past will be carried forward.  Poland, for example, is shaping its future by taking a giant leap backward.  Women’s rights recently took a hit when the country withdre

Aphorisms are pithy sayings that capture what’s common in human experience.  “All’s well that ends well,” came to mind the other day after a misadventure with my car title. I needed to release it to a friend but couldn’t find the document in any of the usual places. Confide

Each morning, my hand mirror gives me two versions of myself. On one side, I get an enlarged view. On the other, I see myself as others do. At my age, neither offers a flattering option. Frankly, there are days when I welcome the Covid-19 edict to wear a protective mask. Not only is c

I’m thinking today about the ways Covid-19 has rendered our society dysfunctional. We seem to blame the virus for much of what’s happened of late.  For example, I scheduled a  phone conference at 10 a.m. last Friday with one of my computer gurus. We had planned to do a trial run

When I was in college in the 1950s, my philosophy professor spent his summers at White Sands, New Mexico among a coven of NSA scientists.  When I asked how much he knew about physics, he laughed and said,  “Almost nothing.” He went on to explain his job at NSA was to visit the l

While browsing through the internet the other day, I learned about an exciting new discovery in quantum physics.  Scientists have learned that some quantum particles adhere to one another, not by electromagnetism, as we supposed, but by something called the strong force. I will ventu

Waiting for Gadot, a play about waiting and written by Samuel Beckett, had its one-night performance at San Quentin in 1957. When it ended, the inmates were reported to have given the production a standing ovation. Few know better about waiting than prisoners, their lives on hold, and