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A Soapy Reach Around
The relationship between a caregiver and a disabled person can be confusing for one, the other, or both. It takes practice, and patience. As a disabled person who cannot even put on my own shoes without assistance, I am completely dependent on caregivers to get through my day. This can be difficult psychologically, because as…
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Portable Breakfast
Few things in life give me as much satisfaction, as much joy, as much sheer pleasure as an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s. Tacos do, but that’s a whole other experience for a whole other time of day. I’m old enough to remember a time before McDonald’s served breakfast – when they didn’t open until 11…
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Outside
It’s the most wonderful time of the year in the desert! The soul-crushing heat of a Coachella Valley summer has gone, and in its place are gentle days with temperatures tickling the mid-80s; nighttime and early mornings are cold, not the cold my relatives in Alaska endure this time of year, but cold enough for…
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The Fall Classic
As today marks the first game of the 2024 World Series, I thought it a good time to share my time-tested and remarkably successful betting scheme. But before I do, can we just acknowledge the arrogance of calling a sporting contest played exclusively by American teams a “world” series? I am reliably informed that there…
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Fifteen
Today, and every October 4th, is the Roman Catholic feast day (commemoration) of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, patron of animals and the environment, champion of the poor and outcast, and the namesake of my alma mater. In 1980, I was a student at Toll Junior High School, a public school…
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Medieval Humor
Imagine yourself inside a Medieval scriptorium. In the Middle Ages (roughly 500–1500 CE) books were written and copied by hand, as Johannes Gutenberg wouldn’t invent the printing press till around 1440. Scriptorium is a Latin word meaning “place for writing;” a scriptorium was most often found in a monastery where manuscripts (handmade books) were written…
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Swimming to Long Beach
29 miles off the coast of the continental United States, located southwest of Los Angeles, you’ll find the island of Santa Catalina, known simply as Catalina to Angelenos. The Glendale Y.M.C.A. has operated a week-long summer camp on the island at their facility known as Camp Fox since 1926. It was here that my father,…
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The City and the Pillar
Gore Vidal was 21 (photo at left) when he published his first novel, Williwaw, in 1946. He was an out gay man at a time when to be openly gay was fraught with genuine peril – both professionally and personally – though he believed that all humans are naturally bisexual, and this natural inclination is…
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Mondegreens
The American writer Sylvia Wright, writing about how she misheard the words “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” when her mother read her the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray as a child, created the neologism “mondegreen.” In a 1954 essay in Harper’s Magazine entitled “The Death of Lady Mondegreen,” she wrote:…
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Stampeding Ostriches and a Homicidal Pope
It includes an observatory, an amphitheater, a zoo, two museums – one dedicated to trains, one dedicated to the history of the American west, a merry-go-round, and not one but two golf courses within the boundaries of its 4,310 acres. It is the second-largest city park in California, after Mission Trails Preserve in San Diego,…
Your mileage may vary.