Articles

There are new plays opening in San Diego; I will not see them. I won’t go indoors with crowds, nor have I been to a restaurant or museum in over two years. I have missed and am still missing many of the cultural events in my area. I have read that people in my age MORE >

I began writing my columns in 1980. It was a weekly then, first for the San Diego Business Journal, followed by the San Diego Daily Transcript, then syndicated with Copley News for several years, then the La Jolla Light. At present, it is a bimonthly column with the La Jolla Village News (part of the MORE >

My newspaper came today with a large, glossy supplement of ideas for gift giving. I also received several catalogs with holiday gift ideas. Some magazines are even trying to be helpful by designating categories: for the man who has everything, for the woman in your life (a generation ago the suggestion was giving her a MORE >

Large affairs are not performed by muscle, speed, nimbleness, but by reflection, character, judgment. In age, these qualities are not diminished but augmented. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) at age 62 If we don’t want wrinkles and grey hair, we’ll have to die young! As this is not something worth considering, let us examine MORE >

I found this old column from some years back that lists some of my “shoulds” from that time. I was curious to see if any of them would still be applicable today. A few still work, but are modified to fit our current culture and lifestyle. Shoulds are injunctions carried over from earlier in life, MORE >

Having just finished reading Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding the Mother Tree, I was bowled over by the ability of trees to communicate with each other through a microbial networks. The Mother Tree is in reality an old tree in the forest who is needed by younger trees to survive and prosper. The old tree sends MORE >

The title of the book is intriguing: Wiser: The Scientific Roots of Wisdom, Compassion, and What Makes Us Good by Dr. Dilip Jeste. I was eager to read it and hopeful that I would indeed become wiser. I will turn 95 on October 31. I still wonder what I will be when I grow up; MORE >

It starts in the morning. Voice 1: “Get up!” Voice 2: “I’m still sleepy.” Voice 1, impatiently: “You’ll be late for work!” Voice 2, pleading: “Five more minutes.” It goes on at breakfast. Voice 1: “Cereal and fruit!” Voice 2: “There’s a doughnut left in the fridge.” Voice 1: “It’s all fat and sugar!” Voice MORE >

In our society, we are often afraid to speak honestly and directly. We don’t want to upset, offend, or step on someone’s toes. We fear being seen as aggressive, pushy, opinionated, demanding, or critical so intensely that we often pussyfoot around and avoid what really needs to be said. And while I applaud our new-found MORE >

A bird’s nest, a wolf’s den, a bear’s cave, a dog’s kennel, a person’s room or house or apartment or castle—these are the sanctuaries, the safe places where one retreats to bear and raise one’s young, to hide from predators, to seek refuge from the world. A cave or a hole dug into stone sheltered MORE >