Comfort
The milieu in which I grew up made it clear that some people were predestined to be more successful than others. It was subtle message. It was complex, having roots in things like the pitfall of pride (i.e., if you’re proud of your accomplishments, you may be stealing glory that belongs to God). Being prideful was one of the worst sins. Echo: What makes you think you are better than anyone else? In the smoldering aftermath of the hottest period of women’s lib, and my dad said things like, “Women shouldn’t drive or vote.” (He now claims it was a tongue-in-cheek statement.) I also grew up on a couple of military bases overseas&

A Case of the What Ifs
This came up over coffee at Zeli:  A friend of mine was at a formal event recently. He was sitting with a prominent, accomplished family–dad, mom, and grown daughter. The daughter had gone to exclusive private schools, then on to college and graduate school. She was beautiful too. This friend of mine wondered what his life would be like if he had grown up in this family instead of his own—how much farther would he have gotten in life? Would he have been able to accomplish more had he not been born into his own highly dysfunctional family (so dysfunctional that he spent time in a children’s home when his parents were unable to care for him). I had

Nutty Jazz Tonight
The Sandbox is discontinuing their Wednesday night jazz series.  Major bummer! That means tonight is your last chance to experience Nutty in the OC…at least for the forseeable future.  Let me know if you want to carpool.

Baseball
For those not keeping score at home, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the National League West champions. There are multiple reasons for this, and I’ll leave it to my betters to do the heavy-lifting on the analysis. For my part, I’ll offer up just three things: 1) The Dodgers bullpen showed up; 2) There was lots of nice hitting by lots of players; 3) Joe Torre’s continued used of Bigelow Green Tea. I think we’re

Wake up, Florida!
It’s not uncommon, but it is tragic.  A person is wrongfully convicted of a crime and sent to prison for decades.  It happened to Bill Dillon, a guy who went to my high school. I wasn’t friends with Bill but I remember him very well (and his older sister, Debbie).  He was a gangly kid with a really great smile and a friendly demeanor.  If you needed 35 cents to buy french fries in the school cafeteria. Bill seemed like the kind of guy that would lend it to you and not bug you about paying it back.