Friends
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Whatknot
Boston wins We had some deep snows when I lived in Arlington, Mass (next to Cambridge), but nothing quite like the thick blanket of white that got dumped on the Boston metro two days ago. The screenshot above is part of an NWS snow-depth map that will soon age out. So enjoy it while you… Continue reading
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Hear in Near L.A.
Just loving the hang time we got yesterday with Tony after two long flights and one short drive from LAX. Continue reading
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A Christmas Gift to My Families
A few weeks ago, my sister Jan and I drove a cache of archival stuff from her garage in North Carolina to my office in Indiana. One plastic container was filled with boxes and carousels of slides nobody had seen for many decades. I also brought along my parents’ slide projector, and digitized each slide… Continue reading
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Whither Medium?
I subscribe to Medium. It’s not expensive: $5.00 per month. I also pay about that much to many newsletters (mostly because Substack makes it so easy). And that’s 0n top of what I also pay The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Reason, The Sun, Wired, and others that… Continue reading
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The Long View
This blog has been looking like my personal obituary section, and I suppose it is. While I promise to change that, for this post I’ll stick with the theme, and surface some correspondence with an old friend who recommended that I read The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. In the correspondence… Continue reading
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Remembering David Hodskins
A hazard of aging well is outliving friends and other people you love. For example, two of the three in the photo above. It dates from early 1978, when Hodskins Simone & Searls, a new ad agency, was born in Durham, North Carolina. Specifically, at 602 West Chapel Hill Street. Click on that link and… Continue reading
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Speaking of character
It seems fitting that among old medical records I found this portrait of Doctor Dave, my comic persona on radio and in print back in North Carolina, forty-five years ago. The artist is Alex Funk, whose nickname at the time was Czuko (pronounced “Chuck-o”). Alex is an artist, techie and (now literally) old friend of… Continue reading
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A simple suggestion for Guilford College
Guilford College made me a pacifist. This wasn’t hard, under the circumstances. My four years there were the last of the 1960s, a stretch when the Vietnam War was already bad, getting worse, and sure to end in defeat for the U.S. Nonviolence was also a guiding principle of the civil rights movement, which was… Continue reading
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The new together
I want to point to three great posts. First is Larry Lessig‘s Podcasting and the Slow Democracy Movement. A pull quote: The architecture of the podcast is the precise antidote for the flaws of the present. It is deep where now is shallow. It is insulated from ads where now is completely vulnerable. It is a chance… Continue reading
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Where the nickname came from
My given name is David. Family members still call me that. Or Dave. Everybody else calls me Doc. Since people often ask me where that nickname came from, and since apparently I haven’t answered it anywhere I can now find online*, here’s the story. Thousands of years ago, in the mid-1970s, I worked at a… Continue reading
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Consumers can’t help health care. Customers can.
Economically speaking, the American healthcare system is not built for patients, because patients aren’t the ones paying for it directly. Insurance companies are. See, health care in the U.S. is mostly a B2B insurance business. It is only B2C when insurance doesn’t cover expenses to the patient. And even then, insurance still pays for it… Continue reading
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BYSMD
Once, in the early ’80s, on a trip from Durham to some beach in North Carolina, we stopped to use the toilets at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. In the stall where I sat was a long conversation, in writing, between two squatters debating some major issue of the time. Think of the… Continue reading
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Remembering Big Davy
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. — Mahatma Gandhi I’m not sure if Gandhi actually said that. Somebody did. My best human chance of finding who said it — or at least of gaining a learned enlargement on the lesson — would have been David… Continue reading
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Valley Fire losses
Here is the current perimeter of the Valley Fire, according to the USGS’ GEOMAC viewer: As you see, no places are identified there. One in particular, however, is of extremely special interest to me: Harbin Hot Springs. That’s where I met my wife and made more friends than I can count. It is, or was, … Continue reading
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Summer vs. School
This was me in the summer of ’53, between Kindergarten and 1st Grade, probably in July, the month I turned six years old: I’m the one with the beer. And this was me in 1st Grade, Mrs. Heath’s class: I’m in the last row by the aisle with my back against the wall, looking lost, which… Continue reading
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Every thing has a face, and vice versa
That line came to me a few minutes ago, as I looked and read through the latest photographic blog posts by Stephen Lewis in his blog, Bubkes). This one… … titled Farmyard, Grandmother, Chicken, and Ovid in Exile, is accompanied by richly detailed text, including this: The courtyard in the photo no longer exists; it and and… Continue reading
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Remembering Robin
I only met Robin Williams once, at a trade show, back in ’03 or so. I was walking across the floor when I ran into my old friend Tom Rielly. Tom grabbed my arm and said, “Come here. I want you to meet somebody.” He pulled me though a small crowd to the guy in… Continue reading
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Close to home
Fort Lee has been in the news lately. Seems traffic access to the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee was sphinctered for political purposes, at the spot marked “B” on this map here: (This was later the place where “bridgegate” took place.) The spot marked “A” is the site of my first home: 2063 Hoyt… Continue reading