Back in the early days of the Internet it was not uncommon to have a “personal webpage.” It was in this environment that I started my own. More than twenty years later the topography of the Internet has changed. Fewer persons use “computers” (desktop or laptop) to access online, and use their “mobile devices” (cell phone or tablet). The HTML has changed over two decades: today webpages look different, and they load differently. The World Wide Web used to be almost entirely text, but now video is at least as prevalent as text. The Internet used to be more populated by individuals, usually “early adopters.” Now commerce and advertising have…

I think I have attended only a handful of meetings in my life that were worth the time. I’m not talking about the informal meetings with a co-worker on almost a daily basis about the nuts and bolts of the job — I am talking about formal meetings with the boss and many others.  One looks across the conference table or around the room and nobody wants to be there at this meeting, and they are wondering when it can end and everyone can get back to work.  There are those few who like to hear themselves talk. The boss announces what he is expected to say by his own…

I drive around the streets where I live at 3:30 in the afternoon and I am surprised at what I don’t see: kids running around playing. The streets seem devoid of children playing. I do see clumps of middle and high school students getting off yellow school buses and walking sullenly to their houses. But they enter and do not seem to come back outside. Are they inside playing video games? Doing homework? On their cell phones? Social media? Trolling around youtube looking at random videos? Regardless, everyone seems to be inside. I don’t often see kids throwing a football around or riding their bikes all over the place. Where…

For the better part of two decades I have been chronicling my New Years Resolutions, for better or for worse. New Years Resolutions This year is no different. Gentle and esteemed reader, I present to you my resolutions for 2018. Wish me luck! P.S. Although Elizabeth did buy that huge stuffed lion as a 2017 Christmas present with money given to her by her grandpa, it did not end well.

RIDING AWAY FROM THE CHURCH: Colin and Katherine are off and biking towards future adventures in their marriage! November 30, 2017 Dear Colin, I enjoyed your wedding last weekend; thank you for inviting me. I remember getting married on June 21st, 2003 — how stressful it was to be the center of so much attention, the strange confluence of the intensely personal moment of marrying another person and to do so in front of so many of your closest friends and family. You go out of your way to invite people to your wedding, and then they show up to witness it. “Witness,” I like that word. All these persons…

“Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.” Quintus Ennius 21 years, mom. 21 years ago you died. At first, of course, it hurt worse since the wound was fresh. But now it hurts in a different way. It hurts worse, in a way. 21 years later it has gotten to the point where you died so long ago that it is almost a forgotten event. Not that it is forgotten by your husband or children; no, we remember your passing well and don’t forget, as we don’t forget everything you…

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln It is said that “rich and powerful men are a powerful aphrodisiac for women” – I remember hearing this line during the late 1990s with the Bill Clinton “bimbo eruptions” that culminated in the infamous Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment trial. I have no idea if women are indeed attracted to rich and powerful men. I never was rich or powerful, and it has been a long time (if ever) since women looked at me as an object of sexual desire. But it is worth asking the question in the…

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus We were for many years blessed at the high school where I work with an excellent security officer, Mr. Dana Eaton. Dana was tasked with the sometimes unpopular job of being the authority figure who helped keep order. When I was in high school, the security guy on campus was a jerk plain and simple. Nobody liked him. But Dana could be “the heavy” on campus and enforce the rules with teenagers while at the same time enjoying a positive rapport with them. Dana would walk around…

“The dream of reason produces monsters” Francisco Goya I have always resisted interpreting my dreams, or seeking to tie large meanings to one’s life from the subterranean miasma from which dreams arise, half remembered  upon waking. I know Jungians and the like place huge importance on dreams, and in endlessly analyzing them.  I am not one of them. I would admit that our dreams do speak to the state of our interior lives, as we work out issues important to us through our subconscious. But I always suspected trying to analyze our dreams too much is to enter down into a rabbit hole for which there is no exit. It…

President Donald Trump, Enfant Terrible February 23, 2017 Donald Trump has been president for a handful of weeks, and it has already been frustrating, excruciating, exhausting, and enraging. The purpose of this essay is to examine why I am so angry, how I can control that anger so it does not drive me crazy, and to make a rational plan for the next four years and how I can react best to the problem that is President Donald Trump. Off the top of my head right now I can list several major sins of Trump in his campaign and presidency so far: For years being one of the leaders of…

As is the tradition, I post my New Year’s Resolutions for this coming year, 2017. But unlike in past years, I find I don’t have much to say. Am I in a “dry period” with regards to personal growth? Or are things going well and I don’t feel the need to change much? No need to do a huge personal inventory? We shall see. Ready to get started with 2017!

Yes, it happened. Back in 2000 I was incredulous that my fellow Americans flocked to see Charlies’ Angels and wrote about this in my essay “Revenge of the Political Center.” I thought the idea of a Charlie’s Angles movie ridiculous at face value. Plenty of other Americans voted with their pocketbooks and bought tickets to see that execrable movie. It was a hit. Might I be similarly mistaken in my perceptions of my fellow Americans and who they would vote for as president? The answer is: yes. My fellow Americans have elected Donald Trump as President of the United States. True, he did not win in the popular vote (Clinton…

Flowers left on Margaret Mary Geib’s grave on October 31, 2016 by Richard John Geib. Twenty years, mom. Twenty years ago today you died. Your body eaten up by cancer like an old fence eaten up by termites. Twenty years is a long time. You have missed the weddings of your children and the births of your grandchildren. You were 55 years old when you died in 1996. I was 29 years old. Today I am 49 years old. It won’t be long until I am the same age as when you died.  It astounds me to think this. Neither your early, unlooked for death nor its trauma for our…

Happy 20th birthday to my personal webpage! On October 9th of 1997 I started this online experiment. The date today is October 9th in 2016. Twenty years afters its inception my online presence still lives. And today I celebrate this fact. Over twenty years my work on rjgeib.com has waxed and waned, to be certain. Depending on what has been going on in my life, I have been more devoted to this webpage or less so. But over twenty years it has been a consistent effort on my behalf. Therein I have sought to make sense of the past towards living better in the now, with a faith in the…

Cross country on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 7:00 a.m. on campus before school. Swim team practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from 3:30 to 4:30 pm, followed by soccer practice from 5:30 to 6:30 on those days. Then there is tennis team practice on Fridays at 4:00 pm, and I play with daughter Julia on Wednesday afternoons. (Elizabeth has a similar schedule with her own teams, minus the tennis and with only one soccer practice per week, not two.) Saturdays are mostly filled with two soccer games to attend. As Maria and I claim through pained smiles, “AYSO equals ‘All Your Saturdays Obligated.’” Then Sunday afternoon Julia’s…

What good is it to learn to do something without teaching it to others? As Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed, “He has learned to no purpose, that is not able to teach.” This has defined a large chunk of my life as an educator. This sentiment has equally influenced me as a parent, if not more so. I know many high-powered, capable adults who are so busy in their lives they can’t (or won’t) take the time to teach their own children. And it does take time. And patience. And can be frustrating. Even enormously so. I have taught classes in digital video editing to adults, and that was easy in comparison to…

I recently finished Gerald Marzorati’s new book, “Late to the Ball: Age. Learn. Fight. Love. Play Tennis. Win.” I enjoyed the tennis references, of course, but what I most enjoyed were the meditations about retirement and aging, friendship and connection — and on learning to do anything new and grow in the process. For Marzorati, this happens through taking up tennis in retirement at the improbable age of 60. But it could apply equally to someone learning to play the piano, cook Italian food, ballroom dance, or speak French. I have seen it all this week as my two young daughters just started learning to rollerblade, wobbling around awkwardly on wheels…

Today my state, California, votes in the 2016 presidential primary. By the end of the day, it should be the end of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. And I will be happy almost never to hear his name again. What a primary season it has been! Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as viable candidates for President of the United States. I am horrified. I have not misjudged the temper of my country so badly since the “Charlie’s Angels” movie debuted in 2000. A re-tread of a lame 1970s “Charlie’s Angels” TV series about three model/actresses who are secretly super detectives? “Surely nobody would pay good money to go see that!” I…

We approach the twentieth anniversary of my humble domain, rjgeib.com. It has been my creative home on the Internet. I have worked on it, then let it languish; its progress has mirrored that of my own life. My online life waxes and wanes, largely dependent on what is happening in my offline life. Extreme exertion in my professional life, for example, has often meant my webpage gets short shrift. But it is still here. Even as HTML has changed so much that many of my pages look distinctly antiquated on the mobile devices many nowadays use to browse the web. Many of my friends from the mid- or late 1990s who…

“To find oneself more than a bit lost — while disorienting and even frightening — is far from irremediable.” It was sometime in early 1997 as I walking westbound on Superior Avenue in Newport Beach, California. My sister and her then fiancé happened to be driving by, saw me, pulled over, and offered to drive me wherever I was headed. I was more than happy for the lift. I was badly hungover that morning, and 20 years later I can’t remember where they drove to or where they dropped me off. Why has this remembrance stuck with me so much for almost an entire week? Because I have been thinking…

Happy New Year, everyone! I indulge in the annual list of ways in which I can improve my life. Cheers!

The main reason I enjoy Facebook, despite all the petty posts and sophomoric banter, is that I can keep tabs on my former students, to some degree. Christian P.? What college is he attending again? Megan L.? Is she still with the Italian boyfriend and working for the Red Cross in London? Facebook usually allows me to answer these questions of young people who have so enriched my life. In this spirit I went looking for Nick F., a student of mine who must be around 25 years of age now. Nick had a sarcastic sense of humor and a wry view of the world; I enjoyed his intelligence, even…

Today I read yet another article about cord cutting, and how the business model for cable TV in the United States is changing. The idea that one must pay for many channels in which one has no interest in order to get the few one does. The cable companies are, they say, fighting a long rearguard action which they will eventually lose, if they don’t change. Or so the story goes. I have been a huge enemy of television in America, as has long been known to my family, friends, and students. If technology disrupts the television industry and nearly destroys it the same as technology did to the music business…

Julia and friend as beginners at tennis. I remember trying to teach Julia how to hit a tennis ball when she was around three years of age. It was a disaster. A torrent of tears. Lots of blaming daddy. Julia was really too young still to hit a tennis ball with any success. Julia has always been a perfectionist, and nobody is perfect at tennis in the beginning. So the toddler threw a temper tantrum and blamed her father. Julia would cry and scream at me, sitting down and refusing to get up. Not fun for anybody. So I outsourced it. Around six years of age we started Julia with tennis lessons…

MOTHER AND SON: 19 YEARS AND COUNTING Children think their parents know all the answers. Their parents are pillars of rock to which they can tether themselves in the storms of youth. When all falls to the ground in seeming ruin, parents still stand tall. It gives them comfort. It makes them feel safe. I remind myself of this when my older daughter thinks I am about to cry. I very rarely cry. But when my friend Chris was run over by a drug addled 23-year old bank teller, I cried plenty. I sobbed like a baby. It was such an unexpected bolt out of the blue, “Rich, Chris was…

I have written hundreds and hundreds of college recommendation over the past fifteen years. Each fall the task of writing these letter has always been above and beyond the teaching and grading of my Advanced Placement students in public school classes that were significantly larger in number than the twenty six the College Board urged. (My principal would just laugh if I told him the College Board recommends no more than 26 students per AP class. I would say the average class size was 37.) Writing letters of recommendation was not officially part of my job description, but it was something unofficially expected of teachers, especially those who taught Honors or AP classes,…