Monsoon season. I dreaded monsoon season. It came with pounding rain, and I had to drive in it. Since the wiper blades couldn't keep up, everything beyond the windshield just disappeared. White knuckled and eyes peeled, I was just hoping that the next Arizona crossing was not a torrent. The roar of the storm always... Continue Reading →
New York City–Revisited, by Stephen G. Harding
It has been 20 years since 9-11, our contemporary day of infamy. As if watching a B movie on some vintage cable channel, we witnessed commercial airliners disappear into the glass reflections of New York’s twin towers. Amidst chaos, a smothering wave of debris, and the successive collapse of the two monoliths, the country attempted... Continue Reading →
On the Strip in ’68–
1968--Looking back it was a snapshot in time, a bygone era that you would only really know if you had experienced it yourself. Summer had come. It was after my freshman year in college. I had gone right back to my old ways, hanging on the Strip, being exposed to a whole lot more than... Continue Reading →
1967–Five Years Before, Five Years After–A Decades Worth of Change (Part 2)
Come September, the Class of ’64 was nowhere to be found. The standouts, the BMOC’s, the multi-sport four-year varsity lettermen, were gone. So was their cheerleading entourage. Most had beat it out of town three months earlier. In that year and across the country, they and their 2,145,000 counterparts had received their coveted high school... Continue Reading →
1967-Five Years Before, Five Years After–A Decades Worth of Change (Part 1)
It was June 1967. Commencement over, we had said our goodbyes. Yearbooks sported both the sincere and the trite, those embarrassing scribbles scanned but not read. After those final goodbyes, we searched the pages, reading and re-reading the notes left behind. Many a familiar face had been seen for the last time. Some would actually... Continue Reading →
It Was a Heck of a Week–The City Manager, Instructor, Lobbyist, Presenter, Moderator, Board Member Hat Box Was Full
What a week some ten years ago--The Weather Channel might have described it as the confluence of convergent and divergent air flows, in this case probably hot air colliding. Even with the diligent effort of a more than capable Administrative Assistant, my schedule was put to the test. In one week I had to be... Continue Reading →
Looking Back
The Summer of Love It was some two years after. Back then, no one knew about the great getaway, my first solo long-distance road trip. I had convinced myself it was about the music, driving up to the Monterey Pop Festival and all. It was the music, but much more. I was on my own.... Continue Reading →
How to raise a voter: Start with these practical tips for building civic skills–by JENNIFER BREHENY WALLACE for the Washington Post
For me, this article by Jennifer Breheny Wallace really hits home. In 1960 we moved, for the first time, from Colorado to California. I was eleven. There would be a couple more riding between Denver and LA on the California Zephyr. Although we had lived in Colorado Springs and like my big sister before me,... Continue Reading →
Turning 70–A Question of Balance
My god I’m 70. How the hell did that happen? It wasn’t like it snuck up on me. I knew it was coming. But my god, here it is two months after the fact and it finally sunk in. I’m fringing 70. Beyond the obvious, being at the top of the immediate family’s old age food... Continue Reading →
So Let Us Begin Anew-
Franklin D. Roosevelt In a world of accerlations, the contemporary focus for those pursuing careers in the public service has prioritized short-term processes over durable public policy. The bigger, more complex questions, let alone the solutions, are usually put off to another day. Now in my post work phase of life, this period provides the... Continue Reading →
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