I had an intense tennis match yesterday. In fact, it was the second weekend where I redlined it in order to win a close match, and left the court limping and exhausted afterwards. My clothes were drenched with sweat, but I don’t think that captures the effort it took to win. I was left utterly spent. It seemed hard to think afterwards. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy this. It is partly what I signed up for and want: the competitive fire. I arrive to a big tennis match in a very intense competitive state – high arousal, narrow focus, strong will to prevail. I am focused on one thing…

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 doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a process. An era winds down gradually, while a new one takes shape in its place; one prepares to end something, and to start another. There is a spectrum between excitedly entering the workforce in youth and eventually moving out of it later. This change at the end, called RETIREMENT,…

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 of shit birds out there the world would be better off without, but this family is just the opposite — they are impressive people, a joy to be around. Watching him slog through that loooong book by Dickens from the 19th century makes him look like an archaic throwback to the age of print and…

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. I was so impressed by the instructor who seemed as fast as a cat and as powerful as a bull. Could I ever be like him? Then a year or two later I signed up for a Shotokan Karate class at Orange Coast College, and I would take the bus for an hour just to…

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 in high school and a “master’s swimmer” as an adult; she has forgotten more about swimming than I ever learned. So I was the worst swimmer in the family. I could swim just fine, but I had never made a study of it. But I was willing to learn. I was willing to swim hard…

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 my mind for a few weeks. Health and friends are the indispensable aspects of life one must protect as one ages, the man’s argument runs. I think I agree. As I look to turn 59-years of age, I could care less what almost everyone thinks of me among the larger public. When I was a…

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 do I regret? What don’t I regret? I have seen many of my peers struggle as they move into the beginnings of the autumn and winters of our lives. Health struggles, money struggles, relationship struggles. You name it, they have it. I have friends who are on the verge of retirement and their lives have…

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 the emotions of that moment clearly. “Trudy has cancer again. It is mostly in the breast tissue. But the scans show it has also spread to the hip bone, spine, and the liver.” My dad delivered this information to me about his wife, my step-mother, Trudy Rideout. This was not her first bout with cancer.…

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 – some 17 years after we created it – we took action to take money OUT of the college savings, not put money INTO it. That was a change. I created an account on their website and directed them to mail me a check. The money would flow in the opposite direction, right when we needed…

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 strong “lift only” culture which argues against cardio-dominant exercise.  This confused me. I asked a friend who was into this and she explained it to me thusly: “People have learned that endless cardio does not result in weight loss, and it can even harm more than hurt you. Cardio breaks you down. On the other…

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 had a similar feeling while watching the South Korean baseball player Ha-Seong Kim play shortstop for the San Diego Padres at Petco Stadium. Congrats to Kim for making it into the big leagues in this “American” sport! I like it. South Koreans and Americans alike should celebrate. A Japanese sumo champion is to be expected.…

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 warn me. So far that has not proved too true for me, as my daughters have grown up without major problems. I consider myself lucky as hell as a parent: my daughters are both healthy and thriving. I have seen the other side of the coin with teenagers involved with serious drug and/or mental health…

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, part of the “anti-colonial” Global South – embracing rhetoric such as “globalize the Intifada,” language critics argue echoes Hamas-aligned activism, playing footsie with terrorists. Then there are the promises of government-run grocery stores, “free” day care, rent control, $30 minimum wage, and high taxes. SOCIALISM. The nanny state. “The problem with socialism is that sooner…

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 sometimes forget others read it. Many of my best friends don’t know it exists, and I would be a bit embarrassed if they brought it up. I rarely talk face-to-face with anyone about my website. It is sort of a secret, and I sort of like it that way. I write on my blog semi-surreptitiously,…

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 decline and dementia for years. But you were the patriarch of the family, my father’s father; I know more of you from family lore passed down through stories than I ever saw with my own eyes. Your story is well known. You earned generational wealth as a successful banker, and you and your wife raised…

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 the wound is still there. I have written often about this unhappy anniversary. So this anniversary is 29. That is notable only because next year is the clean round number of 30. That will be a moment. Thirty years. Wow. Earlier this year my Uncle Bill finally died. He had been suffering for years from…

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, too.) Reading biographies is almost always worth my time, I find. In the past year I have read the life stories of not only Charlie Sheen but Ione Skye, Tess Henry, Alex van Halen, Suzy Favor Hamilton, Frank B. Gilbreth, Liara Roux, Rick Bragg, Carrie Otis, Jimmy Carter, Laura Delano, Patrick Mouratoglou, Molly Roden Winter,…

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 14 years once or twice a week. I am almost always alone. I just go there and hit the tennis ball against the wall. The wall never misses, the ball always comes back, and so I hit it again and again and again. It is great practice. The former tennis pro and noted coach Brad…

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 learning gave energy and momentum to cheating in American schools, in my experience. But ChatGBT has taken it to a whole new level, especially in the universities. The idea is to use technology to “hack” the learning process, getting good grades without having put in much effort. I have heard of students bragging that they…

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 currently well into your sophomore year of high school. Finally! You are really into it now: Honors Chemistry with Mr. W… that class will rock your world. Honors Math, Honors History: the content stage of your K-12 education is upon us. As students colloquially say, “Shit has gotten real!” I love it. I have been…

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 a professional pianist in the classical music world demands the utmost discipline and commitment. Look at the below description which describes the training and life of a concert pianist as compared to a professional athlete: That is intimidating, to put it mildly. Then look at the van Halen brothers from the late 1970s and 1980s.…

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 hits the cover off the tennis ball. They are among the best of the world – if not the best – at their respective sports. The two generate huge profits and are paid accordingly. They are almost household names globally. Big deal.  In the end, they are playing a sport with a ball. Nothing much…

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 Laird is currently 61-years old. A few months ago I said to myself, “What is the physical cost of having engaged in high-level athletic activities for decades? Surfing monster waves since the 1990s?” I knew tennis star Jimmy Connors needed both his hips replaced by 50-years of age – a direct result of decades grinding…

“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 where thugs can do God knows what to me. I don’t care if someone draws a gun on me and orders me to get in their car. No, I’m not getting in your car. I won’t be under your power in that way. You can shoot me first. That is one line I won’t cross.…

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. They have a musky, elemental smell not unlike what is encountered in my daughter’s boxing gym. It is not armpit, nor groin… but some combination of both and more? If it could, I would think the clothes should be STEAMING. They are NUCLEAR! If you leave these putrid clothes utterly drenched in sweat in your…

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 start at UCLA next month, and I am reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls” again. But this time I am reading it in Spanish – “Por Quien Doblan Las Campanas,” translated from English into Spanish by Lola de Aguado. I chuckle a little to myself thinking how Hemingway wrote about the Spanish Civil War where…

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, as seen here – Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 has a famous flute solo in its final “Badinerie”: Or the clarinet as seen here in Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, with its beautiful middle “Adagio” movement: But they are still one voice in a larger…

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. Struggling with a colicky baby and feeling more than a little overwhelmed, my wife and I wanted to go out to dinner. After months at home struggling to get sleep and deal with our new arrival, we wanted to feel like adults and venture back out into the world. After seemingly endless groggy days and…

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 this crime occurred, so I know the area. This news hit home hard. Here are the facts as of now: Early in the morning of April 23, 2025 in the five-story Ashton Sherman Village Apartments, someone reportedly heard a fight in a neighboring unit and a man’s voice saying, “I am going to die. I…

Patience. It is such a small word. But there is a lot in it. Our relationship to time, and our ability to endure it, changes drastically across a lifetime. It seems like forever from your seventh to your eighth birthday. Time moves slowly. Everything is intense. Impatience is all. By the time one enters middle age each successive year seems to pass quicker than the previous one. My dad calls this the toilet roll theory of time: as you near the end of the roll of toiletpaper, it seems to run out faster and faster. The same with life. I remember back in the mid-1970s being forced to go to…