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The Fluffy Train
In my defense, I was drugged out of my mind at the time. So I really can’t be held responsible for… we’ll come back to that. Let’s start at the beginning. It was August of 2013. I lived in the Mountain Gate neighborhood of Palm Springs, a gated community which locals referred to as Mountain…
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October!
October begins with the pumpkin. Not officially, of course. There is no constitutional amendment declaring October the National Month of the Pumpkin, although frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much standing in the way of that. Still, this time of year, you could be forgiven for thinking the pumpkin has taken over. One day it…
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Chief Taylor died last night, may he rest in peace
I am a huge fan of movies and television about my native Los Angeles. I am fortunate in that regard because Raymond Chandler essentially helped define the character of film noir through his Philip Marlowe novels, all set in LA. Growing up, any number of tv shows – like Dragnet, Adam-12, and even The Rockford…
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The Coachella Valley Pollinator Project
I am very excited about becoming involved in this, so I hope you’ll bear with me while I try to explain it. I live in the Coachella Valley, located in the heart of Southern California’s low desert (there is one further north known as the “high” desert) renowned for its intense heat, beautiful mountain landscapes,…
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Let me just say this
I make you this pledge, thoughtful readers. Hand on heart. I will not spend the next month lambasting Donald Trump or the cult of craven constitutional contrarians who have caused the coming congressional cataclysm (okay… so I like alliteration!) they face this November. I’m not even going to dwell on the polling, which is using…
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The Luck of the Draw
Few ideas are as familiar in everyday life, and yet as philosophically difficult, as luck. We speak of lucky breaks, bad luck, fortunate accidents, unlucky circumstances, and being in the right place at the right time. Luck appears to contradict our desire to believe that life is governed by effort, reason, and justice. If success…
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Shakespeare and the politics of enabling
How does a society come to accept, enable, or even celebrate a political leader whose behavior threatens the norms that are supposed to restrain power? This is a question we all should be asking – it is a far more interesting and important question than reciting the litany of Donald Trump’s “sins.” Remember when you…
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Vada the omi – she’s one of the dolly bona sisters!
Gay men today rely less on specialized vocabulary than even when I came out 40+ years ago. Some of my early mentors taught me phrases like “friend of Dorothy” and “light in his loafers” to refer to myself and my kind. But these American gay-isms had their origin in the sophisticated and extensive lengths to…
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Good fortune this August was mine
This is a quick health update, and let me begin at the end and say, “it’s all good.” As longtime readers will know, the month of August has always been somewhat of a speedbump on my life’s journey, dating all the way back to when I was 8 and was run over by a car…
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The Campaign Against Gravity
Most people, when they learn about gravity, accept it with the same weary resignation they have about taxes, traffic, and the continued existence of Garth Brooks. Roger Babson was different. He looked at gravity and thought: this is unacceptable. Roger Babson (left) was born in 1875; he was a wealthy American financier, statistician, businessman, and…
Your mileage may vary.