I grew up in the suburbs of New York City where five of us lived in a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath single family home with our dog Bobo and an occasional cat. Behind our backyard was a wooded patch, a ramble of oak, maple, beech, and various... Continue
Public Citizen
Ideas propel human society, imagination providing an inexhaustible source of fuel. Boundless in reach, ideas cross borders and influence cultures through networks of communication. Originally networks of communication traveled at the speed of direct transmission, sensory experiences such as touch, physical gesture, the spoken word,... Continue
I was never much of an athlete as a child. I was well coordinated, and certainly strong enough, but spending hours practicing a sport was not of much interest to me. My grammar school experience didn’t help; in fact, gym class with Mr. D discouraged... Continue
On December 7th I’ll be checking into the hospital to undergo a cardiac ablation procedure, a process of inserting electrodes and catheters into a blood vessel in my groin, snaking them up and into my heart, and using them to cauterize some confused heart cells... Continue
Consider the human condition in all its glory: creative, depressing, loving, deceitful, generous, lawless, kind, hateful, gregarious, afraid, compassionate, and cruel. What a chaotic and confusing mix of elements we are. No matter the era, political system, geographic location, economic status or ethnicity, the swell... Continue
My mother was a fantastic cook. Once during a visit to our home, she felt the need to get into the kitchen, but the fridge was mostly bare except for some lemons. For her, that was enough. When life delivered lemons, she made lemon sauce.... Continue
Our word “silly” is derived from Old English, and originally meant blessed or lucky. As so often happens, its meaning changed over time. By Shakespeare’s day, silly had come to mean thoughtless or foolhardy, and it retains that meaning plus another that encompasses amusing or... Continue
My nearly 30 years of civic engagement, ranging from serving on the Sonoma City Council for twelve years (twice as Mayor), sitting on the Planning Commission, and citizen activism and involvement in ballot measures and citizen appeals, has provided me the opportunity to understand land-use... Continue
Life can be a punishing experience, and difficulties often happen without advance notice. Aging, sickness and death await us all, the foundational elements of myriad forms of suffering. When things get really bad, inevitably the question arises: is life worth living? I am physically materialist,... Continue
As the speed of change accelerates, our sense of time becomes distorted; we barely have time to coalesce memories before they are displaced by new events. In this way, history becomes lost, swept into a bubbling froth of social and personal transformation. So too our... Continue