2022-11-08 19:55
I’m back. I’ve been off WordPress for some time, working on a book (completion date December 2022). Given the importance of these midterms, I wanted to offer a few thoughts and a… Read More
Blog Directory > Life Blogs > My Life Blogs > LivingEd | All seriousness aside… my-life Blog >
2020-07-08 19:14
My sincere thanks to The Independent for picking up my piece about why Donald Trump, in all his infinitesimal and infantile “wisdom,” pulled the US out of the World Health Organi… Read More
2020-01-31 18:35
After nearly ten years in market research, I understand in data-driven detail how social media seduces us. It hisses an irresistible promise of digital notoriety from a pulpit of total anony… Read More
2019-12-07 05:05
As I posted several years back, remembering Pearl Harbor was drilled into me over the years by a friend of my father’s. He had been a navy lieutenant stationed there when the Japanese… Read More
2019-11-11 20:12
My thanks to The Independent for running my article about a riveting glimpse of Vietnam – 1500 hundred miles offshore. Click here to read “The Vietnam Veteran Who Taught Me&helli&hell…Read More
2019-10-24 22:51
I’ve had the good fortune of having a recent article published in the Washington Post. It relates a moment when I fielded a somewhat complex late night question from my then 6-year-old… Read More
2019-10-23 14:28
The Independent graciously published a piece of mine. With abundant thanks to them and sincere hopes I haven’t tarnished their journalistic integrity, I direct you to this link: http:/… Read More
2019-09-07 21:02
As summer 2019 was just beginning to stretch its legs, The New York Times and the New York Magazine took several potshots at Waldorf Education and The Green Meadow Waldorf School here in the… Read More
2019-08-29 01:11
Remembering Arvilla Manning (a.k.a. “mom), March 26, 1928- August 17, 2013. With an afterward by my daughter Dylan, who actually gets stuff published. On August 17, 2013, Father Burns… Read More
2019-07-04 17:44
My epiphany during a recent call with Sears Customer Service was breathtaking and chilling in its clarity. We had only one hope as a nation and that was to immediately move to New Zealand.&n&hell…Read More
2019-07-01 13:39
I interrupt my irregularly scheduled monthly post to offer two quick “thank you’s.” First, though the passing of my mom, Godfather, and father-in-law over the last several… Read More
2019-05-27 22:24
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan This Memorial Day, I am reminded of something my father used to say to honor this weekend. “Don&rsqu&hell…Read More
2019-03-27 20:16
“Have we been paid?” To a musician, this question can mean one of two things. Prior to the gig, it translates to a simple financial inquiry. If asked by a band member during the… Read More
2019-02-22 20:19
From what I could gather at age 8, the cause of my grandfather’s death was sleep. As people gathered at our home to remember him, everyone who offered condolences emphasized that he ha… Read More
2018-12-29 18:43
I entered Lowe’s a few Sundays back bristling with manliness, as men do the moment they drive into the lot of any mega home improvement store. With a demeanor not unlike Clint Eastwood… Read More
2018-11-06 17:55
Waking up every day to Trump and his GOP enablers has become the psychological (emphasis on “psycho”) and moral equivalent to living on the ground floor of a two-story outhouse… Read More
2018-09-29 23:09
Winter is coming. The mornings have a little bite to them. The shadows are getting longer earlier. A few days ago the elm over the driveway dumped half of its leaves in the time it took me t… Read More
2018-08-28 02:35
In 1990, I had a falling out with Christianity, a rift caused by an epiphany I experienced in the very throes of trying to see the Light. In today’s rising tide of evangelicals and our… Read More
2018-06-15 17:32
Honoring my newest decade starting June 15, I wanted to pay homage to my previous two. My wife, with mild trepidation, approved this missive. Mirage A Trois Marinating in the afterglow of my… Read More
2018-05-28 17:46
A quick reflection this memorial day (5.28.2018), remembering my friends who served. Thank you. The Crossing “I was in Vietnam,” was what he said “I was a vitamin,&rd&hell…Read More
2018-04-19 01:58
I though I would try my hand at a piece of fiction. Thanks and apologies to Helena Antonaccio. Forbidden Fruit Playboy’s Miss June, 1969. She stared up at us from the floor… Read More
2018-02-14 23:35
INTRO VAMP Invariably, behind every great tune is a love story. Love won, lost, or labored. Love sick, struck or stuck. It’s the bedrock for the blues, the soulful moans of inspired ba… Read More
2018-01-15 16:52
Each year on MLK day, I take a moment to read and watch excerpts from Dr. King. My usual m.o. is to provide a few handy links to his “I Have A Dream” speech, a dream made all the… Read More
2017-12-17 22:52
First pants. Then shoes. The wisdom of this core principle has successfully guided dressing practices since the dawn of pants and enjoys the rare distinction of almost complete bipartisan su… Read More
2017-12-02 00:43
The doctor on call for my June 29 appendectomy happened to be a proctologist, one of the many random details that came rushing at me as my gurney careened toward the operating room. In the 1… Read More
2017-11-01 13:45
In the wake of the tragic cowardly attacks in NYC on Tuesday (10.31.2017), I have this vision of ISIS leaders monitoring American news outlets and once again gleefully shaking their heads wi… Read More
2017-10-23 22:06
I had a vision that Chief of staff John Kelly took another walk through Arlington Cemetery late Saturday. To the haunting sound of a bugler playing Taps, he stepped among and then beyond the… Read More
2017-10-15 19:40
Season Finale – Zoot Westchester Triathlon, 9.24.2017 “I should run an Ironman.” The recurring siren song of that fantasy percolates inside my head every year… Read More
2017-07-04 01:11
“He’s great, and he’s a cross dresser.” Even if that hadn’t been the only qualifier we had for the ER surgeon, it registered to both my wife and me as an extrem… Read More
2017-06-05 13:58
In the mid to late 1980’s, East Palo Alto’s crime rate was soaring, reaching a pinnacle in 1992 when it earned the auspicious distinction of having the highest murder rate in the… Read More
2017-05-06 02:29
I look at the confederacy of imbeciles running our country, and I listen to them blather on incessantly about health care. And while I can pinpoint the moment it happened to the presid… Read More
2017-03-09 23:54
Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon, June 12 2016, a Family Journey Photo of Alcatraz taken by Dylan the day before Escape From Alcatraz Tri, June 11 2016 Prologue “JUMP. J… Read More
2017-01-22 23:41
The press limits and fixates its reporting of earthquakes to measurements on the Richter scale. They toss us a number, usually projected at the epicenter of a target behind them, and we take… Read More
2017-01-16 15:07
Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King. In four days, Donald Trump will become our 45th president. It was the best of minds. It is the worst of minds. The juxtaposition between these two men… Read More
2016-11-20 16:46
I imagine that Donald Trump is struggling to find the appropriate words to thank America for placing his apprenticeship at the helm and electing him into office. Perhaps this… Read More
2016-11-14 02:02
On Sunday, September 25, 2016, our family took a 4:30 AM trek from Chestnut Ridge to Rye Beach in NY where my 16-year-old son Elijah, 18-year-old daughter Dylan and I participated in the Zoo… Read More
2016-10-07 15:40
In hindsight, it’s painfully clear that the men’s sauna at the local gym is not the place to voice an opinion, especially one that might get you into a heated altercation, not th… Read More
2016-07-22 22:40
Gandhi, Dr. King, Lincoln, Bhutto, Mandela, Malala. These names blaze as beacons of courage, enlightenment, hope, social justice, integrity and resolve. Each exposed and confronted injustice… Read More
2011-05-02 01:51
Some background on “The Lesson”: On a Saturday in April ten years ago, I was driving home from the gym in San Rafael, CA grinning ear to ear as the local jazz radio station… Read More
2011-03-29 15:36
On Monday afternoon, with significant tooth pain, skyrocketing anxiety, and a gap in my teeth you could drive a banjo through, I found myself sitting with two other men in the lobby… Read More
2011-02-17 18:33
Since I posted the piece below a few days ago, I have received an amazing (surprising) number of comments, questions, and a few other anecdotes. Thank you. I don’t know of any piano du… Read More
2011-02-15 18:57
Of all of the people George Shearing ever met, I am one of them. And while he might have had some vague recollection of my name (my father’s), I am quite sure he would have no recollec… Read More
2011-02-09 15:57
The 2011 Tri season is brewing. A little over a month ago, the local club held its kickoff meeting. Workout programs were handed out, goals were set, safety pitched, and the room veritably o… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
“Ole!” Loosely translated, this is a Spanish word meaning “sucker.” A fashionably dressed man waves a big red cape, pissing off a 1200 pound bull at the other end of… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
If this piece resonates, please click here to sign my petition: http://chn.ge/165t1jP It is truly hard to know what to say, beyond uttering something like “fools” when form… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
In second grade during our usual morning service before classes, Father Moore announced, “Today is Good Friday! Let us pray!” He was wearing the fancy set of robes and with… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
In January of 1985, my west coast jazz sextet, Night Music, somehow finagled its way into opening a concert for Dave Brubeck and his quartet. The gig was at the Masonic Auditorium in Sa… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
I channeled a bizarre combination of an aging Katherine Hepburn and a highly caffeinated Pee Wee Herman as I began to speak at my Godfather’s memorial service in September. My ha… Read More
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