I am back in Ojai today with Ray and our friend, Darrah, from Texas. Organizing, cleaning, and also working on some furniture. The weather was clear with a nice breeze. This is all outside work so the weather matters. We are lucky to have had such pleasant temperatures while we tackle these tasks. Tomorrow morning…
Category: Writing as a Discipline
Picasso’s Guernica: What I Learned Today
Hi folks, I am back in LA to work with students. Today I worked with one student on taking a critical look at Picasso’s Guernica. This was painted in response to the Fascists’ relentless bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, which had 5,000 people. The bombing lasted several hours and 22 tons of bombs…
Working at the Orange Grove
We have just completed a satisfying day of work here at the orange grove. We will be hard at it again tomorrow. We are organizing, working on estate furniture, and basically tackling lots of estate-related work for the next few days. We meaning Ray, Darrah (our friend from Texas) and I plus our helper, Gregorio,…
Sitting in the Dark at the Orange Grove
I am sitting in my car at the orange grove stealing WiFi from my Ojai neighbor (she knows that I do this and is okay with it). It is almost ten at night. It is DARK here. I wish I could take a picture to let you see just how dark it is. Probably not…
Fabulous Oklahoma Fried Onion Burgers: Cook’s Country Recipe
REVISITING OKLAHOMA FRIED ONION BURGERS – A 5-STAR RECIPE This is a great recipe for a turkey burger. It comes from Cook’s Country Magazine, which is part of America’s Test Kitchen and I can guarantee this is one seriously excellent burger. The Fried Onion Burger (FOB) apparently originated during the Depression in El Reno, Oklahoma,…
The Martian: Well Worth Seeing!
We just returned from seeing The Martian in 3D. I must say this was an especially entertaining movie. Matt Damon carries this movie completely and does so aptly, which is quite a compliment since he is alone for a good portion of the movie. The supporting cast is strong, the science fascinating, the look at…
Close Call
Ray, Rachael, Luna and I were walking out of a Thai restaurant this evening, just about to step off the curb, when a car came racing around the corner on the road right in front of us. Behind that car was a police car in hot pursuit. Rachael saw the driver of the first car:…
Heat and El Nino
Here I sit at 10:10 in the evening with two fans whirring and all the windows open. The heat is still with us, folks, here in LA. We are all counting the minutes til we get a nice westerly breeze from the ocean and we return to our beloved Southern California weather, which only varies…
The World of a Real Collector
We had the pleasure of visiting some collector friends of ours today here in LA. Their names are Nick and Lynn and the pictures below are from their converted garage and upstairs apartment. Collectors are a wild and wonderful bunch of folks. They take pleasure in the buying and displaying of their favorite collections, and…
An Unexpected Request Today
Of the 1367 posts that I have written for this blog, the one entitled, “My Sister’s Eulogy Complete with a Few Jokes,” consistently gets the most hits. And today, I had a first. A woman wrote in the comment section of my blog that she had stumbled upon the eulogy for my sister in a…
20 Minutes a Day 