Notes From A Bear's Journey

   It would appear that December is just around the...well, it's here.  My, the end of the year coming so quickly and with it, the almost obligatory summation holiday letters that are sent out to friends and family as an annual stay-in-touch ritual.  The advent of email and perhaps WhatsApp have dented the idea of sending or receiving a physical snail-mail card, and the glittery strings of such dangling over the fireplace mantle might soon be doomed to the museum of relics.  But I'll admit that I still enjoy that feeling of opening the envelope, even if the card inside has little more than an initial or a signature.  I am still on "a list" or perhaps more appropriately, a personal list (conversely, I loathe the churned out cards from insurance agents and other commercial ventures, a job likely spun off to an assistant or secretary who is likely swamped with additional work but receives little credit...my opinion).  And yes, I still tend to dash out the physical --if g

   Think of all the things that you pay cash for, from small pastries and coffees to perhaps your groceries and stamps.  But a car or a house?  Not likely.  We have quietly and rather quickly become a cash-less society.  Reserving rooms, paying utilities, receiving pensions, buying online.  All of it is either done electronically or with a piece of paper that has our signature hastily scribbled on it...the check (also vanishing).  Jerry Seinfeld used to make fun of this check writing, playing a timid man who glances down at this piece of paper and tries to explain to a merchant that he gave all of his money to someone in a building called a bank who in turn gave him these paper checks and told him that they were now as good as those similiar-sized pieces of paper called money which was now housed in said bank; just placing his signature on the check was supposed to be good enough for the merchant to go to the bank and get that money.  Trust me, he says.  When one thinks about it, it

   Open the recent issue of Esquire and find this...labdanum, benzoin, tonka bean, agarwood and osmanthus.  Pop open the recent ELLE and you'll find this as well...ionones, lactones, aldehyde, Helvetolide, Paradisone and Orbitone.  The first list are all natural woods or shrubs ( agarwood is said to be the most expensive wood in the world while tonka beans were once thought to have magical powers) while the latter are all synthetics.  And what they all have in common ( Esquire being targeted to men and ELLE being targeted to women) is that the ingredients are all part of the resurgence of perfumes (yes, to men as well).  Jump to a popular consumer perfume page and you'll find over 40,000 perfumes (what??).  So are we that smelly or what? (I mention that not in a derogatory way but rather because of the creation of such scents to cover body odor is well documented throughout history).    Way way back, when I was just a lad, I can remember wearing cologne.  I was working i

   If you don't happen to be familiar with the holidays in the U.S., today is a day of thanks, a day when a few early colonists were peacefully gathered long ago with a few native Americans to share a feast; whether true or not and whether it would portend how quickly such unity could disappear, the holiday became etched in American history as Thanksgiving.  Of course, the retailers seem to hate this day as if reflecting the disconnect now hovering in our country, the stores slapping up Halloween displays of candies and costumes then tearing them down as quickly as possible to make way for Christmas.  Thanksgiving?  Other than a few turkey plates and napkins, bah-humbug.  No money to be made there, unless you're selling frozen turkeys. Graph from The History Channel    But for the rest of us, the holy-day (with no religious attachment) is one of our special days, a day to be with family or friends or distant relatives, even if that means a long drive or plopping in front

   At first I wanted to call this myopic-types, for a) the very definition of stereotype is generally singular and b) does anyone even use the word "stereo" anymore?  Yet the sense of the word remains, for we still tend to stereotype people and customs and even countries.  This generally changes with the passage of time: women leave the kitchen, a white person robs a bank, Alaska becomes quite warm to visit, eating an animal's innards becomes fashionable.  But how did those wordings make you feel?  A bit uncomfortable?  A bit difficult to digest as if such concepts are still not "the norm."  Ever so slowly our stereotypes fall as men become nurses and flight attendants and women become pilots and doctors, and we think nothing of it.  Small examples, yes, but there are many other roles and images yet to change.    This was the concept of Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox, two ballroom dance instructors who felt that dancing was one of the mediums ready to change.  In a

    Glimpsing the above words, a true editor would perhaps rewrite the heading to be "Editors AND Writing."  And  a strong writer would counter that the wording be left alone.  For some reason there's recently been a spate of editors jumping into the fray of publishing their own books.  Avid Reader just came out (I haven't read it yet but do have it ordered), a memoir of editor Robert Gottlieb who the New York Times described this way: Robert Gottlieb, the celebrated editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker, was a pale, bookish, sensitive, rumpled and vaguely mousy young man.  His first father-in-law, a roofing contractor, took a look at him and said, “If I had a son like that, I’d take him out and drown him like a sick kitten.”  But he went on to edit the works of  "Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, Lauren Bacall, Salman Rushdie, Janet Malcolm, John le Carré, Katharine Graham and Mr. Clinton, among many others."  And then there&#

   Remember way way back when books such as Facts On File and games such Trivial Pursuit were the rage?  Well it seems to be happening again, as authors John Lloyd, John Mitchinson and James Harkin added yet another book to their "fact" series, this one titled 1,234 Quiet Interesting Facts to Leave You Speechless .  It was certainly filled with lots of "facts," but to be honest I began to lose interest about a third of the way through.  It seems that we all receive so much information that while such tidbits can be entertaining for awhile, in the end they become just more for our brains' information overload section to discard...but then this series of books by the authors have turned them into bestsellers so perhaps I am alone in this feeling.  But it did get me thinking.  Their opening pages mention this: The word "fact" has a curious history...When it first appeared in English in the early 15th century, it had quite a different meaning from the one

   So there I was this morning, sitting outside with my dogs; the "super moon" (in appearance, 15% larger and 30% brighter to our eyes) was somewhere in the distance having already done its dance earlier in the night.  And as I sipped my coffee, I sat pondering the great unknown.  Certainly that one, the one we all ask now and then, the "what's out there" or the "why are we here," questions usually asked at such times or such states when we are usually alone or have time to reflect.  But also the unknown people who have come and gone, the cemeteries full, the people waiting in rest homes and hospitals, the lives from civilizations past.  Other than a few historical figures (from emperors to dictators, and from sports figures to celebrities), I found it odd who we chose to remember (other than family) and why.  Wouldn't the nurse who tended a severe wound be more important and memorable than a wealthy baron who built an empire?  Wouldn't the mas

   So there I was standing at the gun counter and being calmly presented the various scenarios as to why I should perhaps consider purchasing a gun (as you perhaps read in the last post, I was there primarily to sell my deceased father's 1898 Springfield rifle and his Star .22 pistol).   My two dogs had been shot and the intruder was now climbing the stairs, or my car was being forced off of the road on a lonely stretch in the desert, or three tough-looking dudes were approaching me as I loaded Christmas gifts into the boot of my car.  All valid scenarios...and then there was this extended opening from Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker : Bars in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia let out at 2 A.M.  On the morning of January 17, 2010, two groups emerged, looking for taxis.  At the corner of Market and Third Street, they started yelling at each other.  On one side was Edward DiDonato, who had recently begun work at an insurance company, having graduated from V

   To begin, my wife and I don't like to have guns in our house; perhaps we feel safer with our two German Shepherds always near us, or perhaps we just don't feel the need.  But we have many friends and family members who are enamored with guns, whether it's collecting them or just having them around for safety.  And despite my emotions, it was time to find out exactly what this feeling was about...because I now had a gun in the house.  It wasn't mine but rather my dad's, something brought down from my parent's house when my mother was moved to memory care (my father, stepfather really, had been dead for over a decade by then) and it was a rifle, a .30-.40 Springfield Kreg from way back, 1898 to be exact.  Worth a fortune I imagined, for isn't most anything from that far back worth quite a bit?  But as it turns out, my education (or lack thereof) on such matters would be just getting started.     Okay, my view on guns and gun violence is likely in line wit

    My friend suggested this post, perhaps to get me to quit sending him photos of the quickening sunset I was observing.  My comments ranged from a basic appreciation of the beauty to "...entering Oz country now" as the colors darkened and grew ever more vivid.  It's something that we've all treasured at some point, a particularly dazzling orange or sky-filling sunset capturing our attention and making us pause for a few seconds from our standard take-it-for-granted attitude.  Sometimes this occurs when we're on vacation, the tourist aspect making the everyday occurrance extra special (say on a boat or cliffside, or a destination such as the Haleakala Crater on the island of Maui where tours drive paying spectators up to the rim in the darkness before dawn). My wife trying to "capture" one of the many desert sunsets.     Of course, this viewing the sun rising is just a matter of perspective as the late Carl Sagan so frustratingly tried to point o