Friday Donuts

Friends, Looking back on my trip to the Galápagos Islands, it occurred to me there are details you only notice when you’re there. Like, there are no donut shops, or, lava tubes can be huge. And so, it felt appropriate this morning to channel my inner David Letterman and share the Top 10 things I never realized about the Galápagos Islands: 10. The mountains get nippy and there are cattle ranches up there. 9. Growing up to 45’ tall, the scalesia trees in the rainforests are largest sunflower relatives 8. Another outsized plant are giant opuntia, tree-like cacti which tortoises like to feed on. 7. Scorpionfish are delicious (and have very few bones). Also, I prefer the Spanish name (pez brujo — wizard fish) 6. Sea lions (sea wolves in Spanish) own all park benches and sleep all day, oblivious to the constant paparazzi snapshots. 5. If you want to sound like a native, the really cool-looking red crabs with blue bellies are called Zayapas. 4. Tortoise and iguana limbs can look really ...

Friends, What makes something special? Distance is a criteria used with some frequency. What, with absence making the heart grow fonder and familiarity breeding contempt, it seems the further something is from your everyday experience, the more special it becomes. Rarity also plays a role. It helps if something is one in a million, or even better, one of a kind. Then there’s popular sentiment, after all, vox populi, vox Dei. And, while all these factors influence our perception, I propose to you that many special things are none of the above. That common and unpopular things near us are arguably more special than distant, rare and universally acclaimed novelties. A breath of fresh morning air filling our lungs. The glow on a loved one’s face as they smile at us. The smell of freshly brewed coffee as we bite into that weekly donut. Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe, as they say, variety is the spice of life. Happy Friday! Two pelicans, a sea lion and an iguana gathered for a special oc...

Friends, Mix equal doses of isolation, adaptation, and time. Add a pinch of random stowaway life forms. Remove predators. The result? An eclectic collection of surprising plants and animals known as the Galápagos Islands. Here, iguanas swim and dive for food, the largest members of the sunflower family grow into 45 foot tall trees, and boulder-sized tortoises blow past the century mark with ease. Frigatebird throats of red, boobie feet of blue, moth-pollinated flowers of white. And, having been granted constitutional rights , sea lions own most park benches in town. Surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes, the only downside of spending time in this remote Ecuadorian province appears to be the complete absence of donut shops. I suppose I too can adapt.  Happy Friday!

Friends, They say bugs are the protein of the future. Compared to cows and chickens, crickets require a fraction of the environmental footprint and are a more nutritious alternative. And, once you get past the ick factor, they’re not that bad (not that great, either). I had the chance to try three varieties of dried crickets this week: regular, lime, and spicy. They arrived courtesy of Gustavo Morejón, an entomologist friend and fellow madman. I snacked on a couple, mixed them with dinner, and even tried one on a homemade donut. The verdict: if you’re gonna put dried crickets in my food, grind them up and don’t tell me they’re there. I can do without seeing them, or picking the legs out from between my teeth. Happy Friday!

Friends, On this, the eve of the 20.83 dozenth anniversary of the declaration of independence, I felt compelled to overpay for a red, white, and (mostly) blue alien Voodoo Doughnut. After all, what’s more American than conspicuous consumerism? This break from the toil treadmill, is an opportunity to ponder why the founding fathers chose to go to war. While we all know it was “taxation without representation”, it was not about onerous taxes (the 1-2% effective tax rate is laughable by today’s standards). It was the arbitrary way they were imposed. I raise my carb-loaded 640 calorie monstrosity to this quarter of a millennium experiment in government, in hopes its citizens (not subjects) will continue the long tradition of holding their elected officials accountable. Because, as Robin Williams once said, “politicians are a lot like diapers, they should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons.” Happy Friday! Sneaking in a photo at DIA's illuminati terminal.