“That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” I never liked the above quote by Frederick Nietizsche. More accurately I suspected a conflict which almost kills you leaves you traumatized. It scars and leaves you less than you were. Instead of being strong and active, you are passive and vulnerable. I preferred the Chinese saying, “When two tigers clash, one is killed and the other is maimed.” Social science has recently documented how “adverse childhood events” can leave lasting psychological wounds which can stay with one for life. The tender inner lives we lead can take only so much brutalizing. Yet the opposite is true, too. Adversity and suffering…

Today California “re-opened” officially. If you are vaccinated you can enter stores without a mask. I did so this morning, and it felt wonderful. To wear a facemask for some twenty minutes while at the grocery store is not the end of the world, and in the larger scheme of things it is a minor inconvenience. But how nice it was to be in a grocery store without a mask for the first time in fifteen months! To see the faces of other people, and even maybe to get their germs. I will take it all! So this is what happened this morning: I walked into a Ralph’s grocery store…

I had my first long summer bike ride along the beach yesterday. I rode some 35 miles total from downtown Ventura to Rincon Point along the beach, and back. It was my favorite time of the day for such a bike ride: approaching sunset. The temperature was dropping as the dying sun reflected a rust color off the seaside cliffs. It was beautiful. This bike ride takes me two hours, and by the time I finish I am pleasantly exhausted and ravenously hungry. I refuel over dinner at a restaurant, with my bike on my car outside, and it is dark when I arrive home. Being outdoors in the sun…

My school year comes to an end tomorrow.  It was my 27th. But my first full one during an epidemic. So it has been a long year of (distance) learning. I taught my students the best I could over the Internet using Zoom (and Canvas). I was there day-in, day-out for my students as much as I could. Even in the darker moments of the pandemic, they always had my full attention. I was gratified to have many of them recognize that and thank me during the last week of school. Not an ideal year of teaching, but I did the best I could. “Control what you can control.” Then…

I never thought I would see the day. A long-term friend of mine is about the best candidate for a concealed weapon permit I have ever known. His criminal record is entirely unblemished. He also owns his own business and regularly handles large amounts of cash, lives and works in a high-crime area, and has been a civilian volunteer for a police department for years. He very much wanted a CCW license, but because he lived in LA County he thought he never would get one. He is the poster child for the “license to carry” permit holder. This fact notwithstanding, I thought hell would freeze over before ultra-liberal Los…

Today is my birthday. I turn 54-years old. I hear some complain of “getting older.” They don’t want to hear out loud the number associated with the span of their years. They seem almost to want to keep their age a secret. That is not me. I enjoy getting older. I have earned my gray hairs. I am 54 today. I don’t enjoy the increasing aches and pains of an aging body. I don’t enjoy seeing those in the generation ahead of me fall into disrepair and even die. I don’t. My father mentioned that he wanted to invite two good friends to our joint birthday party, but neither of…

In a few weeks my younger daughter will finish her fifth grade year and move to middle school. It will end nine years of our family’s involvement at Poinsettia Elementary School. I remember a co-worker telling me how it seemed like her children’s time in elementary school lasted forever. I tend to agree. But the era of elementary school for my family is almost over. Thank God. What was so bad about Poinsettia Elementary School that I will be happy never to see the place again? Well, the crowded parking lot in the mornings. That was horrible; it was a madhouse. If I arrived at 7:42 am to drop my…

The purpose of this essay is to explain my ambivalence about science, and to identify how and why I best learn it. Science is important. You have to study it. But I never enjoyed science classes in school. I enjoyed math even less. I was a humanities person. I still am. I would avoid science classes, and their boredom and pain, in youth. But I go out of my way to learn about science as an adult. Over the past year I read Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” and “The Body: A Guide for Occupants,” for example. I enjoyed these two lengthy books, but there was something…

Today, if she were still alive, my mother would turn 80-years old. But she is dead. She died at 56-years of age. To arrive at 80-years of age would have been quite the milestone for my mother, if she were alive. It was so for my father. Additionally, my older daughter Julia turns 14-years old tomorrow. That is another milestone. High school. The dark drama of deepest adolescence lies straight ahead. The outlines of her adult personality will come into view. Exciting! My mother used to say she found her children much more interesting the older they got. She did not enjoy dirty diapers, spit up, and toddler tantrums. She…

I had occasion lately to come across a posting of mine from January 15, 2007. It is titled, “The Past Is Not Done With Me.” That would make the essay over fourteen years old. I was 39-years old when I penned it, and now I am 53-years old. What is the difference between those two ages? 39 and 53? The difference is HUGE. Let me explain. During my early twenties I was fixated on the drama of early adulthood: developing my adult persona, finishing my education, and finding my place in the world — courtship drama with the opposite sex, and all the joy as well as frustration of that…

This was the moment I realized the end was in sight. It was February 21, 2021. I came across a big stand of hand disinfectant on sale at the grocery store. A sign said “Manager’s Special” in front of a huge stack of unsold produce. It seems nobody was buying hand disinfectant anymore. So they reduced the price, put it on sale, and hoped they could be rid of it — This was much different than a year earlier when the outbreak began, and stores could not stock enough hand sanitizer to meet demand. The fear the Coronavirus held on people was ebbing and would soon be gone, and now…

I talked to my aunt last night who is 75-years old, and she remarked that her pandemic life is not too terribly different from life before. She is retired and need not leave the house for work; she does not have any young children at home all the time because the schools are closed, and she does not have all her activities cancelled. The worst she has to deal with is her favorite restaurants closed with no ability to take any sort of vacation. It is the same with my father: his life is not so different than before. They are old. On the other hand, there are millions of…

“Men have become the tools of their tools… Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” Henry David Thoreau Last week I wrote at length about my long slog through the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. I wondered why our society seems to have moved away from text and novels, and gone in pursuit of bite-seized social media posts and “viral” online videos. And I thought about how a friend recently told me that the popular Breaking Bad series on Netflix, watched by millions and millions, was one of the best TV shows ever produced. His…

Some Meditations on Reading a Long Book During Quarantine in 2021: Patience and Perseverance, Purpose and Fulfilment They say that a book should be only as long as it takes to tell the story. It should be neither longer nor shorter than that. But that is plenty vague, and leaves lots of room for different lengths of books! I think about this as I am half-way through David Copperfield. I have read every page carefully and am on chapter 30. I have been reading the books assiduously for over two weeks, and I am only halfway done. I am tired. This is a long book! The narrative is lengthy. This…

I wrote a few weeks ago about a very minor run-in I had with some bumptious Trumpkins in one of their mobile “Stolen Election” caravan protests. I could see the aggressiveness of these people. They had an edge. So I was not that surprised by the attack on the Capitol Building four days ago, although I was surprised at the audacity in targeting almost the most important few hundred yards of political territory in the nation while Senators were deliberating on whether to certify the election of Joe Biden as President or not. It still takes my breath away. It still angers me. Who the f**ck do these people think they…

Political Commitment: Progressive Politics as a Secular Religion The decline of religion and loosening of family bonds has been much in evidence in the United States these past few decades. The rise of single-parenting and economic stress on the lower classes has weakened the family and led many young people to grow up without much support — they are left to fend for themselves, and it can be a confusing world out there for them. Many are the commentators to have remarked on this. Many young people are lost and look for meaning. They look to belong to something greater than themselves, sitting there alone staring into their smartphones. They…

It has been a tradition for me to plan and record my resolutions for the new year, and then to reflect back on them later. I put considerable thought into my resolutions, as you may witness going all the way back to 1999 and earlier — Rich Geib’s New Year’s Resolutions:Over Two Decades of Introspection and Desideratum — but that is during normal times. This past year has been an abnormal time. How should I live in 2021? What resolutions should I make? Today is December 31, 2020. Tomorrow starts the new year. I gave much thought to making good choices and maximizing my potential for personal growth in 2020.…

Victor Hugo once said that “music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” I am not sure about the “impossible to be silent” part, but music can convey emotions and messages which words, for all their versatile flexibility, cannot. The sound goes straight into our ears where it is translated by our brains into meaning. We interpret music into metaphors which we find to be important in our lives: love, death, sadness, happiness, etc. Obviously, there is opera which uses many words to tell a story, for which music is an equal partner in the telling. The famous “Sull’aria” duet from Mozart’s…

It was November 22, 2020 at approximately 1215 pm. I was waiting at the corner of Saticoy Avenue and Telephone Road in Ventura, CA with my daughters in the car. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was taking them out of the house to get some air; we were going to go browse for Christmas presents. As I approached the stoplight at the intersection, a Harley Davidson motorcyclist cruised to a stop directly in front of me and in the middle of the crosswalk, blocking myself and other traffic. The motorcyclist held his hand down low, as if to tell me to stand back. A caravan of Trump supporters…

We are now in the deepest darkest winter of this Coronavirus pandemic, with the infection numbers rising sharply and the government restricting even further our activities. I read yesterday there were some 3,100 new coronavirus deaths nationally and 216,548 new cases reported on December 3, 2020; and that over the past week, there has been an average of 180,327 cases per day — an increase of 8 percent from the average two weeks earlier. That is significant growth in reported SARS-CoV infections. The United States has endured some 277,000 COVID-19 reported deaths since March. That number will only go up, alas. So here we are — death and disease abound.…

As of late you have shown a particular interest in reading blog posts I have written. “Can I read one of your essays?” you intone before bedtime. It seems to have become a ritual. This surprises me. I am running out of essays for you to read. But they seem important to you. So I will write one you can read tonight. I will write you this letter. Your online learning grades have not been the best, as we scramble to figure out what your teachers want. It seems the online learning paradigm your fifth grade teachers have rolled out requires 1.) a full-time teacher to lay out all the…

I have spoken at length about my antipathy towards social media — or what I would prefer to call it, anti-social media. Jack Dorsey and Twitter — with persons like Donald Trump and others — are trying to poison our country with splenetic 280-character bursts of poisonous partisan politics. The loudest, most outrageous attention getting posts are the ones that gain the most traction on that platform. A lot of storm and noise signifying nothing, or close to nothing. I want nothing to do with Twitter. Or anything like it. But I have seen others, like Mike Bowen, write on Substack. I posted a response to one of his articles…

Gratitude I studied along with my oldest daughter Julia last spring in a class on happiness — supposedly the most attended class in the history of Yale University. Professor Laurie Santos claimed that happiness comes from human connection with others, quality sleep and daily exercise, and acts of kindness and experiencing gratitude. I like that word — GRATITUDE.  This happiness message of Professor Santos makes sense. Gratitude for what we have in our lives can take us a long way down the road of happiness. Gratitude in America is underrated and underused, in my opinion. So I would take some time this morning to remind myself of what I am…

We are in the eighth month of this SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, and the end is not in sight. It calls for the endurance of the marathon runner — the mental toughness, the steel in the spine — which one encounters when one hits “the wall” around mile 18 of the 26 required to complete the race.  The journey would have been easier to endure if we knew we back in March at the beginning that we would be in semi-quarantine for what will probably be a full year or more. When this started, we had no idea. Back then many spent a month or two frozen in panic glued to…

So I had just completed my 45-minute evening swim, covering almost a mile, and changed back into my street clothes. Then I stopped on my way home at the Von’s grocery store at the corner of Harbor Boulevard and Seaward Avenue to pick up some parmesan cheese for my older daughter Julia, as well as a few other items. An evening swim and the grocery store is not an uncommon routine for me. I made my purchases and left the store. It was approximately 7:25 pm and I was back in my car getting ready to drive home. The parking lot was dark. I had started my audiobook on my…

So the election returns are in.  And my hopes, at the time of this writing the morning after the general election, seem to have been answered: Biden will narrowly win the Presidency, and the Republicans will retain control of the Senate. Neither side won, neither side lost. A very close election providing for split governance. Wonderful! How many people are there this morning whose wishes have been so answered? Voters like me who seemed to have had their way in yesterday’s election? Not many, I suspect. But here are the losers, as I see it, in this election: Loser #1: Trump Without power and the presidency, we shall see how…

It has been months since I had anything to say about politics or the presidential election, but it is now one week away. I claimed I was happy to see Joe Biden drub Bernie Sanders so thoroughly in the primary. I wanted Biden, the Democratic candidate, to win the presidency in November, I claimed; but I wanted the Republicans to retain control of the Senate. That would force compromise and a centrist policy on Washington D.C. I still believe that.  But the Democratic Party has lurched noticeably to the left this summer on issues of “racial justice” and so-called “white supremacy.” The cultural left has indulged in national self-flagellation about…

Trudy Rideout went home to her maker today. She died at 1:30 pm on Tuesday October 6, 2020. This ends a life that started on March 11, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. Trudy was my stepmother, a much maligned family role in our popular culture. The negative trope in society is the sullen teenaged girl resentful at her father’s new wife — the stepmother. The daughter does not want a new “mom,” and she makes her feelings known. In contrast, I enjoyed my stepmom and was grateful to have her in my life. I never thought she would replace my mom who died twenty-three years ago when I was 29-years old,…

Among my friends and family It is a well known story: how I took my TV out to the desert and blew it up with a shotgun. That was back in 1986. It was a small black and white TV, befitting a college student with no money. But it was a highly symbolic action, and I owed no other TV set for decades. I had thought it out. TV was a giant conspiracy to make my country dumb, so I thought, and I would not have it in my house. I still believe that now. My webpage logs show that my posting on “Kill Your TV” twenty years on has…

Today I took my last bike ride of the summer. I will be back in the classroom tomorrow, but this afternoon I was next to the ocean with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. The view to my side looked something like this: It was a wonderful ride from the Pierpont area in Ventura to the Santa Barbara County line and back along the coast.  I was thinking of goals and the new school year, and my thoughts revolved around this general principle: Anything worth doing seriously should be difficult to do, and you should expect nothing less. (The actual thought that came to my…