Since You Asked

I offer no explanations for the following.  If you want to use one of them, be my guest.

To paraphrase Will Durant, religions come and go, but superstition is immortal.  The ancient pieties will always rise to the surface; fairies, demons, elves, and ghosts lurk everywhere, and only a talisman known to be lucky (or better yet ecclesiastically approved) can ward off ill-fortune.  Even at the top of the world’s power structures, surrounded by experts eager to dispense rational advice, world leaders still manage to place their trust in fortune-tellers and astrologers.   Korea's former president Park Geun-hye entrusted state secrets to her personal shaman, a woman named Choi Soon-sil, who coincidentally is the daughter of one Choi Tae-min, who performed the same services for Park’s father, former Korean dictator Park Chung-hee.  Sort of a fortune-teller hereditary office.  Korean culture has a rich history of shamanic superstitions, and has only in the last century begun to shed them for more rational ways of seeing the world. Choi Soon-sil a...

Purchasing welcome the things we do every day (I prefer a shoe that zips or slips) and the thousand life- -or-death decisions that  must be made before  supper tend to blunt  and deaden the sharper pains of living. A look backwards (a week was plenty, according to the ancients) affords a better way to look forward.  It isn’t that the jabs must be catalogued like hotel guests as they pass, but if you would know why sleeping on your side (or back,  or stomach) seems necessary, count how many times you have smiled or held a door for another person. Who, when fully grown, did not want to be the  one (not like Helen, solely  because of her beauty) capable  of launching a decent holiday  dinner?

The family legend goes like this: some time in the sixties, my father took the Ford down to Johnson and Sons Lincoln-Mercury in Newport Beach for service. He had to drive the better part of an hour to get there, and as a consequence planned on staying in the dealer’s waiting room until the car was done. My father was not a gregarious person. He was rather quiet, and preferred solitude or the company of friends and family to being around strangers. Nevertheless, a conversation with another gentleman, also waiting for his car, developed. We can assume they probably talked about work, or football, or other such man subjects. But the approaching Thanksgiving holiday somehow came up, and before he knew it, my father realized he was in the presence of a turkey zealot. The man claimed to have a recipe for roast turkey that would forever change my father’s relationship to roast turkey. The recipe and resulting turkey was the pinnacle of human achievement, the man said, but it required co...

When I look in the mirror before going to bed, I see a handsome man assailed by self-doubt. Did I mention handsome?

Recently an episode of ABC’s The Middle included a scene where painfully eager daughter Sue is invited to a party by her older brother Axl. Leading up to the actual party scene the writers and the actors managed to telegraph that once again, Sue would be a fish out of water and say or do something embarrassing while trying too hard to be liked. It was my cue to get up off the couch, walk into my den/studio/office and check my email. Since I became old enough to follow a story I have had an extremely low tolerance for tales where people, even fictional ones, suffer embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up my family was used to the fact that I would sometimes get up and walk out of the room during Gilligan’s Island rather than watch a scene that made me uncomfortable. Today I have zero compunction walking away from anything that sets off my ‘someone is going to be humiliated’ alarm. Indeed there are some shows that I altogether refuse to watch. Included in this category are any ...

I’m unabashedly patriotic. I tear up when watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington . I am convinced (and my family is somewhat tired of hearing me say this) that the government of the United States is the finest example of human achievement in the history of the planet. My dad’s US Army dress uniform hangs in my closet, and I’m proud such a man was my father. So why do I call your attention to the deeds of an officer in the navy of one of America’s fiercest rivals? I assure you it’s an amazing story. I was five years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and honestly remember nothing about it. But I did grow up in the cold shadow of nuclear war. For some reason AM radio was an integral part of that in my world. I remember hearing Eve of Destruction in the parents' car driving through Oregon, wondering if I would live to be a teenager. When I heard Stephen Stills sing For What It’s Worth I thought the lyric Stop! Children what’s that sound-everybody look what’s going dow...