Notes From A Bear's Journey

Cartoon by  Sarah Kempa: New Yorker      In one sense, little seems to have changed with human history.  Certainly invention and methods of what could be termed progress have evolved in many fields, from transportation to agriculture, and other fields that made life easier (for some, anyway).  The Talking Heads sang about "letting the days go by" and "once in a lifetime."  But now, with my elastic memory shifting, I remember hearing that song as "many the days go by" and "many a lifttime."  In my look back at life, or the life I've led so far, it feels a bit like both, the days slipping by and also having slipped by.  It's as if we can all say that we've led many lives, and yet in reality, this time here may simply be "once in a lifetime."   So jump now to Desert Island Discs , now well past its 75th year and still going strong.  The format is that guests are to be placed on a desert island soon after revealing their life ...

     Bear with me since at times this may seem as a rant (yes, the temptation is to write it as "bare" with me, but this is not about a nudist colony).  No, I wasn't on the sidelines working as an unpaid air traffic controller, although in my earlier years I did glance at those "sample tests" books for becoming one (it only took a few questions to put that idea to rest).  But every now and then I tend to find my calm demeanor nearly pushed to the brink.  Not often, mind you, but sometimes.  It is at those moments (as my wife tells me) that I grow sarcastic, which is my version of showing anger.  It's a cowardly way, that of nipping and placing barbs, although I don't use the even more cowardly form of quickly adding, "I'm only kidding."  Even I hate that snidely way of giving a dig but not having the guts to acknowledge it.  Still, perhaps that curmudgeon side of me is popping out from behind the curtain more often as I age and near...

    Its an odd time of year for me, perhaps because of the delayed but approaching winter, it being that twilight season.  Tomorrow is schedule to be 72F, all at a time when our mountains usually brace for snow.  And the trees are only now beginning to drop their leaves, cocky as if feeling that snow will take even longer to arrive.  This is when large branches break under the one-off early storm that surprises with heavy, wet snow which melts slowly, a sticky weight that clings until it takes the branches with it to the ground.   Eugene O'Neill wrote the title play  above, one often hailed as one of the great age-old --or is that old age-- stories in the world of theater, that of tired muscles and crisp skin that add to those thoughts of being washed up, the free-flowing but cheap booze bringing what no plastic surgery can, a morphine cloud to blur what your eyes and brain so starkly show you.  Look at us, they cry like ghosts.  Look at...

                            Photo:  Kevin Lemarque/Reuters     The World Series has finished, although using the term "world" is a bit of a stretch since Major League Baseball is limited to the US and Canada.  And with all that is happening with the tariffs and tensions, Canadians and other fans may have thought twice about heading to the US, wondering if ICE or the National Guard might be waiting outside Customs upon their entry or return (not counting the new procedures to Canadians for being fingerprinted and photographed, AND paying a mandatory $60 processing fee, wrote Money Canada ).  But the Series was a welcome and needed release for many, including me, a chance to watch outstanding talent and plays rarely seen elsewhere, the multiple cameras showing evidence that the high-price of the tickets did little to deter people from packing the stadiums.  Besides, when a single baseball ...

     Have you seen the price of gold, or silver (or groceries)?  Metals are considered a "safe" haven for investors, those people with loads of money who want two things...more of it and to keep what they have.  And while I've written about this before, that of digging through childhood collections of whatever --coins, stamps, comic books, Pokeman cards-- it is worth repeating that now might be a good time to reevaluate your life and possessions ...and life's meanings.  You may discover that much of what you held onto in the hopes that "this will be valuable one day" probably isn't, or won't be.  I found this out when I would buy an art print in my working years, a realistic painting of a wild animal, usually a tiger or a mountain lion or a pod of killer whales.  Artists whom I "collected" (in the sense of buying limited editions which were signed and numbered) decorated our walls, the framing often costing more than the art.  But m...