2011 Articles

A caveat to my piece on my youngest son, Austen, whom I wrote about a-couple-of-weeks-ago: I asked my mother to start calling her grandson weekly and Austen brought Fast Eddie along for-a-surf last weekend.  The results were: Austen is practicing with a premier soccer club; he seriously wants the surf-ride van from me; he had […]

…can England be far behind? Everyone seemed stunned that in the idyllic country of Norway – which is allegedly one-of-the-top-5-places to live – could have spawned such an horrific massacre (I almost said ‘peace time’ disaster until I realized that many people are always at war…). Norway is often equated with Switzerland when one looks

Youngest Son, Austen (who just turned 16), did something very interesting upon my return from Australia: his phone mailbox was mysteriously full and no calls could go through.  This was extremely odd – as Austen is fastidiously compulsive in dealing with any transmissions coming into his smart phone.  Austen also knew that I was landing

Let me preface this essay by saying that I love The Land Down Under and certainly hope that I can teach there for a Semester each year and come back to teach a Semester at CSUN.  In this way, Giti and I can avoid the brutal Aussie and Woodland Hills Summers while mak ing the

So I started to get into my dreams again – since I had absolutely nothing to do in Australia except try and get myself a “future” job, and, essentially loaf around (not to forget that I found four dream books in a bookstore going-out-of-business for $20 [actually, there seemed to be a-great-many-Aussie bookstores going-out-of-business in

Journeying across an ocean and sojourning in another country for a-few-weeks this Summer – afforded me yet another opportunity to look at The Land of My Birth — from the outside.  And the invariable question directed towards me (US) tended to be: What are you Yanks doing?  Which is meant to intimate our ballooning deficit;

I’ve just finished my 32nd year of teaching, and – when you consider that I’ve been teaching an extra 2 months for the past 19 years (year-round school dontcha know?) – that’s another 38 months, (or 4-years-and-a-bit) of classroom experience.  So I’ve pretty much been teaching for 36 years, and, I’m tired of working. I’ve

…so, I left off talking about rosecea and the struggles I’ve had with this nasty condition.  I went into panic mode when Giti recently described my nose as a hamburger nose.  This immediately conjured up images of W.C. Fields’ nose – and, if you’ve ever seen W.C. Fields’ nose – then you know what the

I’ve been living in California for close to 27 years – and I just made my first visit to Yosemite…  The power of the water…coursing all around…is like a massive spiritual baptism. What a place! I’ve heard tell about those valleys with some type of harmonic convergence or spiritual nexus, and I’ve-visited-a-couple: Ojai, naturally (because

I seem to remember reading something Socrates suggested back-in-the-day that went like this: at least I know that I don’t know – which makes me less of a fool than the fellow who thinks he knows. As I look over my Doctor’s Inn oeuvre – I notice that I’ve been writing “as if” I have