Friday Donuts

Friends, I’ve been thinking about the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the 21st. Perhaps it’s fitting the media hyped it and dubbed it the Christmas star. One might be forgiven for misaligning expectations and reality. You had to know what it was, where to look and add magnification to really appreciate it. Otherwise, to the uninitiated it looked like two medium-sized stars right next to each other. A big let-down. But, if you knew where to look and what it was you saw, maybe, just maybe, you’d be in awe -even without a medium-powered telescope. Kind of like Christmas itself. The birth of a poor boy in a shed at a backwater town of a distant colony of the Roman Empire, so long ago. A refugee of dubious paternity born away from home, on a government-imposed journey whose actual birthday was lost to time. How incongruent these humble beginnings seem when you watch frenzied shopping for unnecessary gifts shared at banquets filled with excessive eating. Colorful lights, tinsel, ornam

Friends, We're a week away from starting the twelve days of Christmas, try as retailers might to move them ahead of the holiday. Still, it's never too early to start practicing your caroling. It occurs to me the void left by the lack of traditional yule gatherings could be filled with video streaming. Thus, the idea was born for a curated playlist modeled after the popular melody. It's called the twelve plays of Christmas. I will spare you the first eleven verses of the cumulative song and cut to the final verse. Ready? On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love streamed with me: Twelve Years a Slave, Ocean's Eleven, 10 (with Bo Dereck), District Nine, the movie, The Hateful Eight (or Code Eight), The Magnificent Seven, Six Feet Under, Fifth Element, the Fantastic Four, Three Men and a Baby, Two Weeks Notice and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You may need to speed-up or slow-down a syllable here and there, but it tracks pretty closely to the original. So, grab som

Friends, Did you read about the latest drug recall? AvKare mixed-up packaging for erectile dysfunction and depression medications. The news article steered clear of the plethora of readily available humorous references –as they should, given the potential harm to someone prescribed one of these two meds for serious conditions. The good news is I’m not in the media and feel no compunction to take the high road. Also, I’m not above taking the low hanging fruit and juicing it to the last drop. In fact, I’ve been pondering how they might leverage the situation as a marketing opportunity.  Here are a few thoughts: Depressed? Our meds will quite literally raise your spirits. A novel approach to keeping a stiff upper lip.  World crumbling down around you? We put the “stiff” back in “stiff upper lip” Having performance problems? Our antidepressants treat the “D” in your ED (Elongation Depression)  Hard times? Get hard. Winkie won’t wag? Prescription

Friends, With no-shave November behind us, I thought I’d have some Friday fun with facial follicles. The week started with a full face of hair. As the days progressed, so did the razor, revealing a different look –memorialized for posterity with a selfie. Looking back, it occurs to me the mugshot for each weekday reflects that day’s personality rather fittingly… Mysterious Monday . Part assassin –killer of the weekend buzz. Part terrorist –think momentary panic, what was I supposed to do this week? looming deadlines? Part sage –or is that just the weekend fog still settling? Trapeze Tuesday . The three ring circus is in full swing. Juggling tasks, taming wild deliverables and flying all around without a net. All while looking like wild Buffalo Bill Cody. Worldly Wednesday . You’ve got this in spades! Half the week is behind you and things are going according to plan. Calm, collected, professional. Every workday should be like this.

Friends, It’s been an odd year. Still, as I take stock of things for which I’m thankful, there’s no shortage of blessings. So many, in fact, I thought I’d pull together a top ten list of things for which I‘m grateful. 10. I don’t have schizophrenia, despite the fact advertisers on Pandora seem to disagree and are targeting me with ads for their once monthly injection. 9. Green screens. Yes, we all know you’re really at home but now we don’t have to be distracted by those dirty socks in the corner of your room. 8. Scotch, wine and fancy beer. Without them, instead of a connoisseur I’d be a common drunk. What a difference pretense makes! 7. I haven’t had to set an alarm this year. No commute. No planes to catch. Plus, my 14 second commute makes it so that even if I sleep-in, I can make that early meeting. 6. Streaming services. ‘Nuff said! 5. The logic-defying, record-breaking stock market. Despite all economic indicators pointing south, it seems my IRA lives in an alternate universe whe

Friends, You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. While true for most things in life, when it comes to life itself, who knows? After all, if you’re reading this, chances are, you’re still alive, so the absence of your life can’t possibly make your heart grow fonder for it. While I’ve lived a thousand lives (via Netflix, TV, Books, etc.), I’ve never really died. One day, death will come knocking –it’s inevitable. That day, I hope to greet her without regrets. The goal of life can’t be to avoid death, that would be futile. Whether or not you believe in an afterlife, while we’re here, the goal should be to make the most of the time we’re given. In short, the goal of life is to live! So, shrug-off that misunderstanding, share a wink and a smile and lend a helping hand. Make that call, try that thing, take that chance. Watch that sunrise, smell that flower, listen to that song, feel that breeze and taste that donut! Happy Friday!

Friends, It figures Friday the 13 th   would happen twice in 2020. In fairness, it happens twice most years –three times in 2026, hope you’re not superstitious! In perhaps a sign there may be something to this day’s unfortunate reputation, my first draft of this note, created in my comfy bed, vanished in the ether –so I’m having to re-write it. Fortunately, writing the same content the second time is much faster (granted, some brilliant turn of phrase may be lost in the process). In the spirit of the day, it feels appropriate to share a few spooky facts I noticed this week: A new DNA study shows  cats domesticated themselves . One more reason not to trust these aloof creatures! The study was silent on whether witches had any involvement in the domestication process. My local library has a 10 foot tall papier-mâché alebrije of  Xólotl , the canine demigod of the underworld. Foolish me thought his name was Cerberus –who needs three heads when a veritable cornucopia of dissonant color can

Friends, It’s a beautiful new morning. The sun rose yet again, and graces us with its ever-cheerful disposition. The dawn’s fresh air shares a crisp caress, rousing the senses while the aroma of hot coffee whisks you away to that ethereal somewhere you know must exist but can’t seem to quite pin-down. Your eye ganders at a gaggle of gliding geese, while imagination takes wing with them. It is good to be above ground, where one can still enjoy the sweet, rich taste of a golden, fluffy donut. Happy Friday!

 Friends, There's been some hype about the “rare Halloween blue moon” tomorrow, a curious way of phrasing the coincidence. By definition, a blue moon is the second full moon of the month, and since the synodic lunar cycle lasts 29 days and change, any full moon occurring on the last day of October will by necessity be the second that month. In other words, all Halloween full moons are also Halloween blue moons. Sure, blue moons only come around once every two to three years (once on a blue moon, if you will), which works-out to six times this century for a Halloween full moon —so they are relatively rare— still, since the only kind of Halloween full moon is the blue variety, it seems misleading to imply they’re rare because they’re blue. Then again, I may just be getting grumpy in my old age. In any event, since a celestial object is in the limelight this year, it feels appropriate to wear a sci-fi themed mask. As a bonus, I can wear mine any time, for as long as the pandemic lasts

Friends, Patterns are ubiquitous to those who seek them —and humanity tends to seek them. Our brains try to make sense of everything, even chaos. The patterns we impose on random events are a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. It seems we’re so predisposed to create patterns, that a team of scientists spent a decade in the late 1940s and early 1950s creating a random number “bible” which could assure market researchers and quality control workers everywhere that their samples contained no bias. As it turns out, even that valiant effort wasn’t as successful as had been believed for the past 65 years. Just last month, someone poked a hole in THE definitive random authority: “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Deviates”. Does that mean millions of gallup polls done before the age of computers should be thrown-out? Nah! –the numbers in the book are still pretty darn random. Are people lousy at randomness? Absolutely! Still, one can try. This week I thought I’d share some “random” observa

Friends, With Trump forfeiting the second presidential debate, the clear winner in last night’s “game 2“ was the American public. Unless, of course, you tuned-in to one of the town halls to get some echo chamber reinforcement, in which case you have my sympathy. As for myself, I watched Django Unchained. As a form of escapism, nothing beats a good revisionist western, with Tarantino’s trademark excessive blood effects (seriously, Quentin must think of humans as blood sacks, ready to explode when pricked). Sure, the references to orthopedic inner soles (Dr. Scholl’s) and children’s games (Candyland) are too cute by half, still, my only regret is having waited eight years to premiere the movie. It occurs to me that if they ever remaster, re-release or redo Django, Dunkin’ should pounce on the promotional possibilities. They could of, course, temporarily rename the stores Django Donuts. Then, they could give their donuts nicknames to align with characters in the movie. The French crulle

  Friends, Parents like to brag and boast about their children. It’s as natural as it can be annoying. New parents may not realize this, however, beauty and merit are often in the eye of the beholder. Miguel de Cervantes put it best: “A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.” These words ring as true today as they did when they were first used to preface the Don Quijote back in the 16th century. I say this to introduce my youngest son, Rafael. While I hope my 27 year experience as a parent of four has removed some of the subjectivity, I will let you judge for yourself. This Holy Family High School junior’s “spirit week” attires have been a hoot! Although the idea was for students to follow each day’s theme, I don’t think his outfits were exactly

Friends, Prime numbers have a certain mystique that makes them elusive. As the foundation of modern computational cryptography, it's not an overstatement to say ecommerce would be impossible but for very large prime numbers (more accurately, numbers that are highly likely to be prime). Cicadas come out in prime number intervals and, if you’ve been around me long enough you’ve heard me use my infamous 1-17 mood scale (17, of course, being a prime number). On the surface, prime numbers’ sole commonality is that they are only divisible by themselves and by one. Think of them as the Breakfast Club of natural integers. They’re all serving detention, but have nothing else in common. Yet look a little deeper and patterns start to emerge. Both the diagonals on an Ulam Spiral and curves on a Sack’s Spiral reveal that, although prime numbers continue to elude a predictive theorem,  they do align in patterns. Having turned 53 this week, you could say I’m in my prime (number) age. Obviously

Friends, A, wildfires! That paradoxical combination of beauty and devastation. They spellbind the soul with their hypnotic cadence. They intimidate the mind with their chaotic essence. They enchant the eye, blocking shorter wavelengths to make the sky’s reds and oranges pop at dawn and dusk. They torment the eye, irritating delicate membranes to make the veins and capillaries pop with smoke and dust. I suppose the aspects you dwell upon come down to distance and choice. The closer you or your stuff, the easier to see the vicious and be frenetic. The closer you are to safe, the easier to choose to focus on the aesthetics. They remind us our lungs are more than just viral breeding grounds, they are also particulate matter filters, cleaning the air, one breath at a time. That sporadic cough might just be lung cancer (yay, not Covid!). So, to celebrate the end of wildfire season, I decided to make some fume donuts (smoke rings) whilst browsing my photos of colorful skies. That was last wee

Friends, People change jobs now and then, LinkedIn lets me know some of them. This week, I noticed a trend: one business had hired a ton. Droves of colleagues, again and again, to a company I’d not heard of, men. The mystery began to unravel when the Google resolved the omen. My former employer back when rebranded, now goes by Lumen. No brain drain or hiring trend, just same-old, with different name. So why risk confusing all men and children and even women? No matter how ugly the pen, it’s better than starting again. If X avier was patron of X -men, were C enturyLink workers the C -men? Perhaps that’s why they’re on CNN explaining the new name to friends. Or is the New World Order bullpen having fun at our expense? It’s eLUMENtal, yes we can pretend, the iLUMENati are at it again! Whatever the reason for change, I wish you success, telco-men. To cheer you I will not eat ramen. It’s donuts forever, amen! Happy Friday!

WARNING : Today’s missive, while thought provoking, treads political waters and could be perceived by some as proselytism. If you are triggered by politics, maybe don’t read this week. I plan to return to safer shores next week. Should you choose to read this, may I ask is that you withhold judgment until you’ve read the entire note? My views may prove unpalatable to folks on both sides of the aisle. Regardless of your stance, know that I value and respect you as a friend. Friends, Does a politician’s character matter? Can the champion of fiscal conservative policy have a history of stiffing creditors after recklessly over-leveraging his hotels and casinos —not once or twice, but half a dozen times? Can the defender of unborn human lives be a twice divorced misogynist who paid hush money to a porn star? Can the guardian of law and order refuse to acknowledge, yet alone condemn, racism?  Can the paladin of Christian values eschew charity for the immigrant, spew vitriol towards his det

Friends, Have you noticed artificial intelligence is trying to make us lazier? Whether LinkedIn recognizes someone thanking you and offers-up three one-click response options, or Gmail prods you to follow-up on an email you sent five days ago, AI wants to help. The results can be hilarious. Try typing-in the first two to three words of a sentence and then complete it by using only “next word autocomplete”. For instance, if I had any idea what I was going to say to the other two people that were doing great things... You get the idea (the words “for instance” in the preceding were my sentence kindling, the rest was all AI). The problem with not knowing where your sentence is going is knowing when it has arrived. While we don’t yet have complex AI-generated (AI-ded?) exchanges, the trend has made me question platitudes. Lately I’ve been making an effort to be more thoughtful in my responses. The way I see it, if Google can predict my sentence or Facebook can suggest my comment, I’m just

 Friends, Do you ever feel caught in a cycle? Eat, work, sleep. Rinse, wash, repeat. We are, after all, creatures of habit. Yet, while the broad categories into which we compartmentalize our activities may sometimes seem to follow a rigid pattern, if you dig a little deeper, the details vary. I believe Heraclitus was onto something. No man ever steps into the same river twice. I’m somewhat of a sucker for photographing landscapes. There’s this one particular spot in my neighborhood where my phone tells me I have 143 photos, mostly pointed towards the mountains. It might feel like I’m recreating the same photo. The same framing of the same bucolic golf course in front of the same rugged mountains around the same time. Yet, the results are different every time. It never gets old because it’s never the same landscape twice. I suppose there’s a lesson there about mindfulness. I suppose, also, that’s why I’ve stuck with Friday donuts so long. It follows a pattern, yes, but if you’re paying

 Friends, “Follow us on Instagram”, read the unassuming sign at my dermatologist’s office. Intriguing! Admittedly, not intriguing enough to actually go on Instagram, let alone follow them. Instead, I let my imagination fill-in the gaps. What might they possibly be posting? Photos of warts, moles, rashes and bad skin all seemed plausible. The realm of misguided marketing miscues is filled with possibilities. Pixelated faces or redacted eyes concealing the identities of the woefully afflicted, all in the name of scaring patients into using sunscreen and getting regular check-ups. This would be consistent with my one other experience in medical social sharing. My endodontist who on occasion WhatsApps root canal X-rays and photos of anonymous wide-mouthed patients –dental torture devices firmly mounted to their faces. His handle: “Let’s talk endodontics”. Let’s not and say we did! You know, maybe social sharing is not for everyone. We ought to leave it to beautiful people and donut purveyo

Friends, Most folks are, or aspire to be, good. For proof, check-out any of the myriad social media add-ons claiming to tell you something about yourself. Your spirit animal is likely a dragon, lion or horse, never a weasel, blobfish or pool scum. Why? Because of your courage, loyalty, beauty and charm, of course! Any “negative” trait has a positive spin (say, crazy or fierce). Your name means some virtue and your last name has a glorious ancient origin. If you’re single, you should be dating a hot celebrity or flawless model –I’ve yet to see it predict a pock-faced methmouth. Your eye color says you’re a leader. And of course, you can read garbled text with the top 1%, solve the puzzles reserved for geniuses and share once you do, to prove it! Speaking of sharing, your patriotism, religious fervor and compassion are all fake, unless you share, like and comment. I call it the “guilt trip call-to-action”. Things like… “I know you won’t share”, or “if you’re ashamed of me, I will be as

Friends, Typecasting is inevitable. No matter how hard actors may try to distance themselves from the characters they play, one tends to stick with us. Keanu Reeves may play Neo (The Matrix) or John Wick (idem) but he will always be Ted “Theodore” Logan (excellent!). That said, some actors get away with more than others. Take Jason Bateman. He’s credible as either Marty Byrde (Ozark) or Pepper Brooks (Dodgeball). If you hadn’t made that connection before, I may have just ruined Ozark for you. Sorry, not sorry! As Cotton McKnight (ESPN ocho’s other narrator) might have put it, credibly playing different roles “separates the wheat from the chaff, the boys from the men and the awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian”. Speaking of Canadian over-actors, William Shatner has got the right idea. Whether as a law firm spokesperson or promoting a sleep disorder equipment cleaner, he seems to be leaning-in to the bombastic Priceline negotiator character that made him famous…  or was there a

Friends, One of my early forays into recreational writing was as the night clerk at the Lake Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. The “shift log” was a notebook, intended to convey pertinent information about the evening’s events to the morning shift. As the last person manning the front desk at 1 AM (at which point we closed), I was entrusted with this sacred duty. Most nights were uneventful, so I started writing top ten lists (à la David Letterman) to give the morning folks a reason to consult the log. I sampled all manner of superficial topics which ranged from “top ten things people think JP stands for” (yes, Jalapeño Pepper was among them) to “top ten statements I’ve overheard tourons say” (a portmanteau of tourist and moron, used to refer to some of the park’s visitors). If I were to write such a list today, it might go something like this.   Top ten subtle changes brought about by the pandemic 10. Hand washing. Wait, that’s a change? For whom?? 9. Green thumb. It’s eas

Friends, Christmas in July is a Yellowstone tradition which, according to lore, started when a July blizzard trapped a tourist group in the park. They made the best of it by exchanging gifts on the 25 th . Whether it has any basis in fact, when I worked there concession employees would decorate a small conifer tree in the Firehole river with tinsel and leave a case of beer for the rangers who cleaned-up the mess. With this holiday gaining mainstream traction, it begs the question: if tomorrow is Christmas, shouldn’t next Saturday be New Year’s Day?  January 1 st is, after all, a rather arbitrary day to start a new year. Why not hit the reset button next week?. It might be fun to have a mini new year’s eve (aka Año Viejo) celebration. And, I’ve got a coronavirus mockup we could burn at midnight (I had been considering making it a disco ball, however, my inner pyromaniac keeps whispering "burn it"). Then again, there’s the whole social distancing thing to keep in mind and,

Friends, With Colorado hosting one of the nation’s most competitive senatorial races, science news has been a welcome source of relief from political coverage and mud-slinging advertisements. Deep space exploration and deep sea discoveries are a great escape from the deep divide our politicians like to cultivate and exploit. Hmmm… sounds like a challenge. Maybe, I can be the one to politicize these discoveries. Challenge accepted! Have you checked-out the new comet? Look northwest an hour after sunset, and just below the big dipper you’ll see NEOWISE  comet! If you are in the northern hemisphere, that is –sorry southern hemisphere folks. How does this comet get away with discriminating against half the planet? Literally! There’s a new X-Ray map of the sky with twice the X-Ray sources as its predecessor. On closer examination, it looks suspiciously like POTUS watching a solar eclipse (I’ve augmented the original SRG spacecraft image

Friends, I like summer. Watermelon on a lazy afternoon. Grilled anything with a beer. Warbling and chirping fill the air, while fragrant white and yellow jasmine transport me back. Long days pack more activities and warm evenings lure me outdoors. It’s the perfect time to wind down a lazy river or bag a fourteener --or three. A great way to start a day so filled with possibilities is to bite into a warm airy donut and let the mind wander. Ah, the possibilities! What does your summer weekend hold in store for you? Happy Friday!

===[Note: a plain(er) English version follows this abbreviation-laden message]=== Friends, YOLO but, TBH, FOMO does not justify this. IMHO, TLAs are overused. IOW, just B/C you can, don’t mean you should. Granted, perhaps a PEBKAC. FWIW, OGs are guilty 2. WRT this trend, the GOP and DEMs contribute alike. From them we learned terms like NIMBY and it's ugly cousin BANANA. It’s in the news (LMK if you agree MLK would support BLM). It’s in sports (AFAIK, MLB will BRB in July). OBTW, I find the progression from LOL to LMFAO to ROTFL humorous. Anyway, this 4 th , you should try OMG donuts (they’re GR8!). Just try not to catch the ugliest abbreviation of them all (COVID-19) while you're at it. Apologies if this message was TL;DR. Anyway, g2g, so TTYL. TGIF!   P.S. LMK your thoughts on the DL via DM ASAP.   ===[as promised, the translation, in case you missed any of the abbreviations, acronyms or jargon]=== You only live once but, to be honest, fear of missing out does n

Friends, Our analog world is filled with endless possibilities. While a fancy digital computer monitor's 1.07 billion colors may seem like overkill, there are infinitely more colors in nature. The number of hues is only limited by our ability to perceive them. Similarly with sound. While we may hear up-to 10 octaves, the 120 chromatic scale notes contained therein are merely arbitrary stops in an unlimited array of possibilities. Skeptical? Try tuning a guitar by ear --or listening to a Bollywood movie soundtrack. And that’s just the audible range. There's a  black hole playing B flat a whole 57 octaves below middle C. Right? Pick any topic and the number of possibilities is similarly boundless. Resolution? Subatomic particles to super galactic clusters. Time? A jiffy to an eon. Math? Will get your head spinning (and that's before you leave the integer, real number realm). Why, then, do binary choices hold such appeal? Perhaps it's comforting to simplify our immens

Friends, My brief stint as a graffiti artist involved the letter "Z" (borrowed from "Zorro"), some chalk (borrowed from my 6th grade classroom), and several walls on my way home (borrowed as my canvas). This week, memories of this "gangsta" childhood moment came rushing back, triggered by some utility graffiti  in my 'hood (neighborhood, to the uninitiated). The 811 gang (a.k.a. the 'call before you dig' crew) has been tagging sidewalks and streets with the "Zorro tie-fighter" sign. Like their Star Wars counterparts, the spray-painted orange eye sores never seem to travel alone. They're lined-up every few feet to ward-off rival gangs. Who knew a gang war of epic proportions could be brewing in the deceptively tranquil Denver suburbs? You may naïvely buy into the illuminati fake news that these markings are actually pointing-out communications (orange) fiber conduit (tie fighter symbol) going both ways (the letter "Z"). A

Friends, Do you ever look at something and wonder what the designer was thinking (or smoking)? While I’ve run across the “solution looking for a need” phenomenon, there is usually some perceived benefit that comes from the extraneous feature. This week I discovered that’s not always the case. Enter Domino’s Pizza “open on other side” tab (see photo). Arguably the most useless “feature” ever conceived. For some reason beyond comprehension, the packaging designer at Domino’s decided their sauce containers needed a small protrusion that looks like something you’d grab to open the lid. Except, it’s not! While you can use it to try to get to your sweet icing or ranch dressing, this will result in an unseemly tear. As best as I can tell the tab’s sole reason for existing is to tell you not to use it! Never mind the fact that if the extra tab wasn’t there, folks would gravitate towards the tab you’re actually supposed to use. Even if we as a society have come to rely on gratuitous instructi

Friends, Have you ever caught yourself straightening-up a painting when visiting a friend? How about discreetly kicking gravel off the sidewalk back onto your neighbor's yard? Do take photos using the Fibonacci sequence to balance the subject? If so, you may enjoy some degree of OCD --"suffer" seems harsh. Mild perfectionism, as I call it, comes under many guises. People fuss over behavior, organization, phrasing and numbers. One might always boil precisely a dozen eggs, make a spiral with a dozen registration stickers on one's license plate or feel compelled to shoot a photo of two dozen flying moths so it's neatly divided into thirds. One might. One might even have a donut with "D" shaped sprinkles while drinking from a Dunkin' cup in a color-coordinated tie-dye shirt --or, one's nephew might. Mental disorder? Maybe. Then again, sane can be boring. I find fastidious folks fascinating --feel free to differ. Self-incriminating photos notwithstand

Friends, This week finds me spaced-out. SpaceX’s first manned commercial flight to the ISS was conveniently pushed to Saturday at 1:22 PM. A perfect time to grab a beer while we blame the weird hour on planetary alignment. You know, that precision exercise that is hurling a highly explosive device from a rotating sphere towards a small moving object. Then if you’re in the mood for a little detective work, Sherloc and Watson are going to Mars in July. Sound like the plot for a bad B-movie exploiting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters? Actually, it’s just two instruments aboard the Perseverance rover. Christened in the space agency’s geeky tradition of reverse-engineering acronyms to fit clever names, SHERLOC (Scanning for Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) will be accompanied by WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering). As an aside, who capitalizes the second letter of a word in an acronym? (NASA, that’s who).

Friends, Society seems comfortable with this notion that people born within a 20-22 year window share common traits. Marketers and the media casually refer to us as Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials. Popular as these groupings are, we seldom delve beyond the broad strokes they convey. Peel the curtain back a little, and a bizarre framework emerges. I’ll set aside the 80-90 year repeating cycles of idealists, nomads, heroes and artists –if you’re curious,  read this . Instead, I’ve decided to share some random observations –from this easily amused Gen-Xer (yes, I had to look it up). The now defunct Millennial catchphrase “OK Boomer” carries a secret irony: it’s based on a generational paradigm created by two Baby Boomers: William Strauss (b. 1947) and Neil Howe (b. 1951). Gen-X gets its name from the 24th letter in the alphabet, because it’s the 24 th  generation on the list. Fittingly, unlike the preceding and following generations, we were too lazy to change it. Baby Boomers were prec

Friends, We underestimate human creativity at our own peril. People around us are always coming-up with new ideas, big and small. I love those small unexpected surprises that bring a big smile to my face. Here are a few examples from recent days.  My youngest son, Rafael, came-up to me with a bundle of plastic characters asking me to guess what it was. I recognized the three figures as different versions of Link, the main character in the Legend of Zelda video game, and noticed they were surrounded by a small chain. It's a chain link fence, he says to me, smiling. As I'm still laughing, he pulls-up what appears to be the arm of another Link figurine. What's this? he says. I give up. The missing Link! It appears he has inherited his father's sense of humor. His older brother, Pablo, delighted us with an exploration of Twinkie cuisine. I had heretofore thought of Twinkies as the snack of last resort, when the zombie apocalypse renders biodegradable food inedible. Boy was

Friends Merriam-Webster defines a pyromaniac as "a person who has an uncontrollable impulse to start fires". Those of you who think me a pyro, on account of my new year's eve celebrations , should note I can control my impulses. I guess that makes me more of a pyro phile . That said, I do enjoy a good pyrotechnic display, no matter the proportions. Case in point, my grandmother Jane would have turned 100 years old on Sunday. She was really keen to reach this milestone and blow-out 100 candles. Although I had promised her I would host the party, the deck seemed stacked against it. When she passed away six years ago, I could have called it off. I didn't. When the pandemic hit, limiting gatherings, again, I could have called it off. I didn't. I was ready to have a small get together when inspiration hit and technology came to the rescue. Enter Zoom! Sunday, most of the family joined to sing happy birthday and watch the fire hazard from a safe distance (what el