• In Memoriam: A Look Back At Many Of The People We Lost in 2017

    December 31, 2017 / 1 Comment

    hourglass.jpgSome people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people led.

    In 2017, these 15 obituaries featured people whose lives — and deaths — most affected me:

    * Stuart McLean, storyteller and broadcaster

    * Sue Grafton, mystery novelist

    * Robert Guillaume, actor

    * Bill Paxton, actor

    * Mary Tyler Moore, actress

    * Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, political dissident

    * Chris Cornell, singer/songwriter

    * Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author

    * Paddles, First Cat of New Zealand/social media star

    * Charles Manson, cult leader

    * Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy

    * Bernie Wrightson, illustrator/artist

    * John B. Anderson, congressman

    * Bruce McCandless II, astronaut

    * Lillian Ross, journalist

    Other people we lost this year who won’t be forgotten:

    * Roger Ailes, Fox News co-creator

    * Chuck Barris, game show host

    * Chuck Berry, singer/guitarist

    * William Peter Blatty, author

    * Simeon Booker, journalist

    * Jimmy Breslin, columnist

    * Glen Campbell, Rhinestone cowboy/singer

    * David Cassidy, pop star

    * Alan Colmes, political commentator

    * Jonathan Demme, director

    * Fats Domino, singer/songwriter, pianist

    * Gord Downie, singer/songwriter

    * Dick Enberg, sportscaster

    * Dick Gregory, comedian, civil rights activist

    * Monty Hall, game show host/producer

    * John Hillerman, actor

    * Al Jarreau, singer

    * Jake LaMotta, boxer

    * Martin Landau, actor

    * Cardinal Bernard Law, religious leader

    * Jerry Lewis, comedian

    * Rose Marie, actor

    * Roger Moore, James Bond

    * Erin Moran, actress

    * Jim Nabors, actor/singer

    * Masaya Nakamura, “father” of Pac-Man

    * Manuel Noriega, Panamanian dictator

    * Tom Petty, singer/songwriter, guitarist

    * Robert M. Pirsig, author

    * George Romero, director

    * Sam Shepard, actor/playwright

    * Liz Smith, gossip columnist

    * Harry Dean Stanton, actor

    * Don Rickles, comedian

    * Jay Thomas, comedian

    * Robert James Waller, author

    * Judge Joseph Wapner, TV jurist

    * Adam West, Batman

    * Edith Windsor, LGBT rights activist

  • Walking

    Quote of the week

    December 27, 2017 / No Comments

    “How much would I have to work out to become an Instagram model? Like, more than once a year?” –Hank Green

  • Sourdough starter

    Blunderbore is born

    December 26, 2017 / 2 Comments

    Three cats and a dog currently reside in our home. This is the smallest my brood has been since, gosh, 2003? I like to have at least half a dozen kitties hanging around and now that we’ve purchased a larger house, there’s plenty of room for more.

    While waiting for additional felines to appear, I decided to create new life. Over the Christmas holiday, I birthed… a sourdough starter.

    Although I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, I waited until things had calmed down. The past year has been focused on work and settling in; tending to a starter just wasn’t in the stars. I have time now, though.

    Three days in, Blunderbore doubled in size.

    Yes, I named my starter. And why not? For the foreseeable future, I’ll be tending to his needs every day. If I’m going to spend that much time and effort caring for a living organism, I might as well name him.

    A few hours ago, I gave Blunderbore his first feeding, new accomodations and tucked him in for the night. If all goes well — and fingers crossed it does — I’ll be making sourdough bread before 2018 is even two weeks old.

  • coffee and book / reading

    My top 10 favs of 2017: A year spent reading, watching and listening to intriguing stories

    December 21, 2017 / 3 Comments

    This year, amidst the madness of the world, I consumed 46 books, 48 movies, dozens of TV programs and many podcasts. These were my favorites:

    (Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)

    MY FAVORITE BOOKS
     

    1. “Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins” by Susan Casey
    2. “The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well” by Meik Wiking
    3. “It” by Stephen King
    4. “When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II” by Molly Guptill Manning
    5. “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi
    6. “The Year of Pleasures” by Elizabeth Berg
    7. “So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading” by Sara Nelson
    8. “Invasive” by Chuck Wendig
    9. “Big Mushy Happy Lump” by Sarah Andersen
    10. “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert

    (Honorable mentions: “Paul Hollywood’s Bread” by Paul Hollywood, “Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good” by Kevin Smith, “I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks” by Gina Sheridan, “My Reading Life” by Pat Conroy, “Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself” by Alan Alda, “Simon’s Cat vs. the World” by Simon Tofield and “Obits: Reading behind the fine print” by Barbara Larsen)

    Overall reading ratio: 51% fiction, 49% nonfiction; 51% male, 49% female.

    MY FAVORITE TV SHOWS
     

    1. Sense8
    2. This Is Us
    3. The Great British Baking Show
    4. Stranger Things
    5. Grace and Frankie
    6. Madam Secretary
    7. The Expanse
    8. The Santa Clarita Diet
    9. Penny Dreadful
    10. Fortitude

    (Honorable mentions: The Great British Baking Show Master Class, Timeless, The Defenders, Supernatural, The Closer, Pitch, Grimm, Haven, White Collar, The Following, Notorious, Iron Fist, The Good Place and Too Young to Die)

     

    MY FAVORITE MOVIES
     

    1. Hidden Figures
    2. Obit
    3. Collateral Beauty
    4. Moana
    5. Our Souls at Night
    6. The Boomer List
    7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
    8. LBJ
    9. The Post
    10. It

    (Honorable mentions: The Orient Express, Hasan Minaj: Homecoming King, A Street Cat Named Bob, Me Before You, By Sidney Lumet, Going In Style, Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde, Patton Oswalt: Annihilation, The Big Sick, Wonder Woman, Hitman’s Bodyguard, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and The Typewriter)

     

    MY FAVORITE PODCASTS
     

    1. The Vinyl Cafe
    2. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
    3. The Daily from the NY Times
    4. Death, Sex & Money
    5. 99% Invisible
    6. Criminal
    7. Dear Hank & John
    8. 10 Minute Writer’s Workshop
    9. Nocturne
    10. Radiolab

    (Honorable mentions: Live from the Poundstone Institute, Smithsonian Sidedoor, The Nerdist, Lovett or Leave It, Reply All, Work in Progress, WTF with Marc Maron and You Must Remember This)