Because I’m an animist (one of the reasons I was so enthusiastic about Dana’s Shinto post) I don’t collect “stuff” so much as welcome new pals to the posse. Julie and I are minimalists with penchants for toys, books, and outsider art.  (And ground hogs.  Our resident groundhog, the latest of many generations, just passed… Read More

Kevin and Khati covered all my salient thoughts about meditation.  I meditated formally at the Shambala Tibetan Buddhist Sangha in Lexington, KY, and with yoga instructors over the years. I once visited the Furnace Mountain Zen Center in Clay City, KY.  The Center is gorgeous and located on a thousand acres of stunning foothills at… Read More

Reader Advisory.  Iron Butterfly’s“In-A-Gada-Da-Vida,” and Simon and Garfunkel are referenced in this piece. If an earworm ensues, counteract it by singing “Bingo” (you know, “there was a boy who had a little dog and Bingo was his name-o…”) Snow days During grade school snow days, Chicky Ross, Danny Corsi, Tommy DiPetro and I used to… Read More

The first charm is the card above, which was made for and given to me by my fairy godmother, Lenora Perkins.  Lenora taught me to shrug off stress.  She never prescribed anything to anyone.  I learned this by watching her. If a situation aggravated Lenora, she’d stop, compose herself, stare into space for a few… Read More

Comedy, for me, is reified in the Animal Crackers scene when madcap Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) steps away from staid Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) and  Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) saying: “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”  You know, recently I’ve favored cremation over burial, but burial’s preferable if I can have Groucho’s line carved… Read More

Sometimes it’s not who you are, it’s who you know… I grew up in rural Western Pennsylvania, Beaver County.  My mother worked at the Beaver County Courthouse, she was a clerk in the tax office where all taxes, including motor vehicle, were collected. One sunny afternoon just after my junior year in college, I heard… Read More

The most dangerous thing I ever did was the consequence of the most dangerous occurrence that ever happened to me. Read More