Category Archives: BLOG (2009-2010)

What kind of man am I? (“The question.”)

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It was a week ago today.  The first football game I had attended in years.

The weather was cold, with drizzling rain and light snow showers in the mountains and an occasional lonely flake finding its way to where I was sitting in the visitors’ bleachers.

Across the field was my high school football team playing in a first round state playoff game.  The home team bleachers were about half full.

I could have sat there if I’d really wanted to.  There was plenty of room, but I didn’t want to take the chance that someone might recognize me and ask me what I’m up to. Continue reading →

update 10-21-09

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Good morning.

I’m just sitting here with Baldo lying on my desk, breathing all stimulated and such.  Maybe he wants to go play or eat or something. I pet him occasionally, which he seems to like.  He feels really good even though he’s a bit chubby.  (More to love, right?)

Anyway, I think we’ll go outside for some fresh air and activity.  We both need it and the weather’s great right now.  Now that autumn is fully  with us–the leaves are starting to assert their independence from the trees–we/I need to change eating and (lack of) exercise routines.

I’m working on a few things that are website-related including learning how to compress and convert video files to better fit into my YouTube and website locations.  I’m also evaluating new web hosts that offer more storage for my website.  This means the site might be unavailable for a couple of days while it repopulates with a new web hoster.

I am upgrading in order to include more video content here.  This will include recent videos of me playing with Baldo and fly fishing at Huntington Reservoir this past Sunday. Continue reading →

Peggy

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One year ago today my sister, Peggy, died.

I want to honor and remember her with some images of moments I was able to share with her.

One of her many musical “favorites” that she fancied expressed something about her life was The Carpenters, “This Masquerade,” which is attached.

For Peggy, who I miss today, especially: Continue reading →

Fly Fishing and Defragmentation .

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If there’s one thing that can keep my focus these days, as it has for the last seven or eight years, it is fly fishing.  Whether I catch any fish or not.

It’s probably my favorite meditative activity.

Everything else in my life—trying to figure out how to survive financially, living with my aged father who struggles to be happy, my cats whose primary focus seems to be their next meal, trying to understand my relation to my environment in its many guises—recedes into my subconscious for the time I’m on the water.

Yes, I know there’s plenty of writing out there, including “zen” books on fly fishing, addressing the positive clarifying effects of such re-creating moments.  Those when the spirit, whatever that is, is renewed, invigorated, cleansed. Continue reading →

Order

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This weekend I’ve been busy trying to put some “order” into my life.  I think it’s partly seasonal–locating and unpacking the cold weather gear–but this year my effort is more radical than usual.

Since I decided to leave academia for good after completing a one-year teaching appointment at the University of Minnesota last academic year, I worked at a local golf course in order to pay my bills and play some golf.  But as I tired of the customer service lifestyle there, I realized I could not continue to put off what I have been talking about doing for some time: making a career of writing.

Both academia and any other work were distractions because focus tended to be on matters (including teaching which I have always had a love-hate relationship with) other than writing. So a few weeks ago I finally said, “Enough!” I quit my golf course job and started preparing to write. Continue reading →

Update

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Good morning, friends.

A brief note to inform you that I am in the process of trying to optimize my web site.  One of the first changes I am making is creating a new tagline to something more manageable and interesting, but still connected to Bruce Lee’s “no way, no limitation” mantra that I have adopted for myself.

In fact, it–No Way (Man)–was the title of a Blogger site I never did anything with.  (I never figured out how to cancel the site so it simply floats in virtual reality taking up space.) Continue reading →

Taking out the garbage.

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I was taking care of all my little bedtime preparations a couple of hours ago including taking garbage out to the dumpster while trying to distract my two cats, Baldo and Chica, from their preoccupation with food, when I noticed how pleasant it was outside.

Baldo and Chica had followed me outside—they follow figuring, based on past experience, that I’ll eventually give in to their food cravings and persistent pleadings—and I sat down on a picnic table bench between my father’s unused motorized chair (where Baldo has recently taken to sitting as if it is his) and another nearby bench where Chica normally sits (and which she would eventually settle on).

I sat down, straightened my back and stretched my neck—my body’s principal stress indicator—and looked up at the star-filled night sky before closing my eyes and deeply inhaling and exhaling. Continue reading →