Dear Jim, Yesterday during one of our summer visits, I performed for you the initial Tai Chi form. You looked at me quizzically afterwards and asked, “What does this do for you?” I suspect you saw me perform a short set of semi-elegant movements, and then wondered how learning or practicing these added value to … Read more
A competitive 59-year-old tennis player reflects on recovery, aging, Tai Chi, and balancing intensity with restoration after hard competition.
I am in the final stages of my teaching career. I’m not done yet, but I am close. When it is all said and done I will have spent over 34 years in the classroom. That is a good run. What I’ve come to understand is that transitioning from one stage of life to another … Read more
I have an acquaintance at my gym who I see reading “Nicholas Nickleby” by Charles Dickens while he rides the exercise bike. He is a doctor – a radiologist, as is his wife. His daughter attended UC Berkeley, and his son is currently at UCLA. Their family is educated, prosperous, and happy. There are plenty … Read more
Even when I was a little kid I was attracted to the martial arts. I first was able to sign up for a karate class at Newport Harbor High School when I was in fifth grade. My mother would drop my brother and me off there on Saturday mornings and come back an hour later. … Read more
I started swimming back around 2012 when I suffered a serious tennis injury. I had to find workouts off the court, and my tennis club had swimming pools. So I got into the pool and started swimming laps. My brother was a serious surfer when he was younger. And my sister was a varsity swimmer … Read more
A buddy of mine recently told me that a friend of his – a bit older than us, maybe in mid- to late 60s – claimed that the only real priority he has left is “to take care of his health and his friendships.” Wow. That really made me think. That statement has been on … Read more
A hop skip and a jump and I will turn 60-years old. Well, in a few months I will turn 59. But that is close enough. I have a lot more in my rear view mirror than in front of me, for sure. But it allows me to pause and look back a bit. What … Read more
It must have been sometime during the summer of 2017. I was driving south on the 5 Freeway through Camp Pendleton on my way to San Diego to visit a college friend I had not seen for years. I remember it was during the summer. Beyond that the exact details are blurry. But I remember … Read more
My wife and I have been saving since literally almost her birth to pay for our daughter’s college tuition. Year after year we put money in her 529 investment account for college. Each month we would put at least a few hundred dollars into it. The money added up. Then in November of 2025 – … Read more
I recently read that weight lifting in the gym is the hot new trend, and along with that the American consumer’s desire to eat more protein: this is health nowadays, or so the trend says. Weight beating exercise using barbells is in; cardio on the treadmill or out running is out. There is supposedly a … Read more
I enjoyed watching the Japanese baseball players Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani on the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team last month. They played crucial roles to help the Dodgers win their second straight World Series pennant two months ago. They were heroes not only in Los Angeles but also in Japan. Two years ago I … Read more
My daughters are on the verge of adult life. One is already a freshman in college. So I have less and less to say to them about how to choose a career or a spouse, or any of a dozen other topics. “Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems,” parents more veteran used to … Read more
It has come to this: — The elected Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) member who has not had any serious managerial experience in anything previously and recently rode a wave of populist enthusiasm into office. Mamdani represents the progressive edge of academic-style Leftism in the United States, … Read more
My webpage is 29 years old and counting. October 1996 was when it first went live. I accept no advertising on my website, and I spend zero time and energy trying to promote it. It is a labor of love, not profit – nothing more, nothing less. I write on it for myself, and I … Read more
Dear Grandfather, I write this letter to you approximately 36 years after your death. We lived some 375 miles away from you when I was growing up, so I did not have the opportunity to know you well. And by the time of your funeral in 1989 you had been in the throes of deep … Read more
Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death. It has been 29 years to the day since she died. Every Halloween when neighborhood children go house to house to get candy, I sit at home and mourn the loss of my mother. It happened almost three decades ago, so the wound is not new. But … Read more
Yesterday I was at home after work and found myself on the verge of finishing Charlie Sheen’s recent autobiography. I don’t regret reading his book, although towards the end I was heartily sick and tired of his tales of damaging drug abuse, salacious porn/sex, and multiple failed marriages. (I imagine Sheen was tired of it, … Read more
It is my quiet place. It is where I can be by myself, get my pulse rate up, and earn a light sweat. It is where I can get my hands and feet moving in unison with the yellow ball. It is the wall at Buena High School. I have been going there for some … Read more
Struggle is the way. Difficulty is not a problem but the point. One struggles and one grows. It is an active process, not a passive one. One needs to wrestle with a thorny problem. School should be where one learns to do this. Cheating has always been a problem in school. The Pandemic and remote … Read more
Dear Elizabeth, I write you this letter upon the request of your Science Academy teacher. He says he will hold onto and deliver this letter to you when you are on the cusp of graduating from high school. That is approximately two and half years from now. So here it goes: Beautiful daughter, you are … Read more
There are musicians, and then there are musicians. Ozzy Osbourne and Daniel Barenboim in the photo above, for example: they are both musicians but their training and careers could hardly be more different. The point of this essay will be to examine precisely how they are different, and how they are similar. The life of … Read more
I have always thought – and said out loud – that I did not really think someone like baseball player Shohei Ohtani or tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz were really all that big a deal. So one can pitch and hit a baseball supremely well, and the other covers the tennis court like a gazelle and … Read more
I always thought he was sort of god-like. In my mind I saw big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, and his pro volleyball player wife Gabrielle Reece, walking along the Hawaiian beach like Adonis and Aphrodite. Two almost perfect physical specimens – both graceful and beautiful, strong and vital. But they have been married for decades, and … Read more
“No, I’m not getting in the car with you. If you want to shoot me, go ahead. But I’m not getting in that car.” Everyone has – or should have – a line they won’t cross. For me it is this: I’m unwilling to allow my person to be transported by force to another location … Read more
This is the pile of laundry I leave after a hard session of competitive tennis. “Nuclear laundry,” I call it. I come home, get out of my sweat-drenched clothes, put them in the laundry hamper, and take a shower. I put on fresh clothes and am finally clean. But the workout clothes are just disgusting. … Read more
Almost 38 years ago I first read and enjoyed Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” I read it avidly over a stretch of two or three days in September of 1987. I had just moved into my apartment to start as a student at UCLA. I remember it well. My oldest daughter herself will … Read more
As a musical instrument the flute or the clarinet can be used in conjunction with other instruments to create harmony or counterpoint. The same is true of the human voice. It can sing, for sure! But as a solo instrument, there are limits. The flute can be the primary instruments in a large orchestral work, … Read more
The Mimi’s Restaurant at 3375 E Main St. Ventura, California went out of business in February of 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The building at that location has been an empty shell for several years. But I still remember the evening we took our toddler to eat there. It must have been sometime in 2008. … Read more
A Concerned Father’s Bequest: Confidence and Competency Yesterday I read the unhappy news of a murder in the 12600 block of Riverside Drive in Los Angeles, California, some 47 miles away from where I live. Almost 30 years ago I dated a woman who lived in the Valley Village neighborhood almost right next to where … Read more