At long last, because Ray won a spring sabbatical, we made it to South Africa. Ray, Ruben, Adriene, Lee, and myself boarded planes, trains, and automobiles (with about the same amount of time spent in each) for almost three weeks away. We started the trip with three quick nights in …
I may have only 12 more trips before I cross off all from my world lists. Depending on your adventurousness, twelve may sound like few or a lot. At about one trip per year, I would like foolishly to see it all before I turn 60, then stay home, revisit …
The last year of a tumultuous decade, 2019 brought immense and unexpected career growth at the expense of relationships. I wish the upcoming twenty-twenty swings the balance back towards reflection, art, and unplanned wanders. As I feel fast transitioning through middle age, I would like one more savor of youth …
As our Kenya Airlines flight hurtles mid-morning over the fluffy-cloud South African veld from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to Cape Town, I consider, on this penultimate day of the decade, the year of 2019 that was. At this time a year ago, I was fleeing a Gulf Coast storm that threatened …
A social demographer wrote awhile back a book called “Bowling Alone” that lamented the rise of Americans doing activities alone, like bowling, which once were intrinsically social. Like much what I write about, I never read that book, but I do empathize with the sympathy of bowling alone. I attend …
Last Sunday night, I marched down 14th St and Folsom to a music venue new to me, Slim’s, to see an early show. Ezra Furman is both a performer, once a resident of Massachusetts, and a band. I first discovered his music about five years ago when Greg dragged me …
The company I joined in January sells complex biochemical reagents (oligomers) required for CRISPr editing of genes in cells for academic and pharmaceutical research experiments. Trouble is, the company’s factory can’t make these reagents well. Yields hover around fifty percent (about half of the product is trashed) with wild, unexplained …
Friday night, party! Spinach came over for dinner. We ate ricotta ravioli, foraged salad from the back driveway, and split a bottle of champagne. At the evening came on, we wandered convivially down 14th St to a party at Oasis club, a venue I haven’t been to since the midterm …
Every year in the spring, Matt Fisher and Todd Cooper host a long-weekend camping festival incongruously named Gays Hate Techno, as the attendees are not all gay – perhaps predominantly so; they actually like techno; and the music played roams challengingly from ambient to breaks to even techno. This year, …
Sunday, a week ago, in an East Village bar, with Patrick, Amanda, David, and Jeremy, I spend forty dollars to drink three fancy cocktails. I hardly feel drunk. Oh no. Back in the day as a young college lad, when I first experimented with alcohol, one drink got my fairly …
