Category: Real Personal History
-
Reading Lamp
[The Ideal Reading Lamp. Photo source: Me.] Other than a wind storm that blew in a window in our screened-in porch, downed branches and howled like a demon on Bald Mountain, there really isn’t very much to write about these days. I should note that the aforementioned window has not been removed, for cleaning or…
-
Cabin Fever 101
[A view from the front door. Photo is unfortunately mine.] Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan! [Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!] –Francois Villon I can tell you where the snows of yesteryear are. I can also tell you where the snows of today are…and I can tell you where the snows…
-
Mystery of the Paris Photograph
[Photo source: unknown.] I don’t know where it came from. It was leaning against our brass lamp…since I don’t know when. A year or two ago, I began to glean the Kodak slides and other photos that came into my possession after my father passed away in 2004. There was a collection of letters and…
-
Joshua Tree Diary: The Road to Wonder Valley
[Amboy Road…to Wonder Valley. Photo is mine.] I’m driving from Joshua Tree to Twentynine Palms. I turn left on Adobe Drive. Ahead of me is the largest U.S. Marine Training Base in the world. I don’t go there. I turn right on Amboy Road and pass the RV campground where we spent a week in…
-
Joshua Tree Diary: The First Days
I looked in the mirror late this morning and decided I would need a haircut sometime in the next few weeks. Trouble is, we’re a few miles from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base (the largest U.S. military base in the world, I’m told) and nearly all the haircut places offer a “military cut”. Well,…
-
Hotel California
Okay. I ripped off the title of a song by The Eagles for one purpose only: to get your attention. The more accurate title should be A Hotel in California. But that sounds like a chapter in an in-flight magazine for American Airlines. Tonight is our last night here, at the Standard Hotel, on Sunset…
-
Love At The End Of The Tunnel
[My photo. Elias leaves pre-K.] The longest and most uncomfortable, painful and seemingly endless flight I ever undertook began at 4:00 am on Monday, November 20 when I forced myself out of the bed. I forgot our wakeup call was for 4:15 am. Our flight was scheduled for 7:00 am. It was going to be…
-
The Quiet Feast/The Great Cycle
I felt the breeze… I stumbled on a tree root when… Finally, we reached the pond… Concentrate. Start over. When I was a teacher I was often given the dubious privilege of “lunch duty”. A room, nearly the size of a gym, filled with 5th & 6th graders…or 9th & 10th graders, and a hand…
-
Fathers and Coffee
One more cup of coffee before I go… –Bob Dylan [My photo] This gray, almost monochromatic morning, I lounged in bed reading yesterday’s New York Times. It’s something we did every weekend for years while we lived in Manhattan. The…
patrickjegan 