My father and stepmother pose for the camera in Heisler Park, Laguna Beach on August 3rd, 2018. My father’s mother suffered a heart attack when she was 77. She survived it and was hospitalized, and all her children rushed to her bedside for support. A few weeks later, she had another heart attack and was gone. My grandmother did not suffer; she went quickly and painlessly. Only 77 years of age, she left perhaps too early. Her husband, on the other hand, was precisely the opposite. My father’s father, my grandfather, lived to be 91 years of age. But the last ten or so years of his life he suffered dementia,…
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My 51st Birthday
Hello, year 51! Yes, today I turn 51 years of age. It is an anti-climactic day in light of last year: turning 50 years of age is momentous, turning 51 is just another year. 55 will be more of a marker, and my 60th birthday will be a huge landmark — not to mention turning 70, if I even make it that far. I am not big on my birthday as a “big deal.” A quiet celebration with close family suffices. A birthday is yet another day in the year for me. I keep a low profile. None of my social media feeds acknowledges my birthday. I tell nobody at…
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“Oh, Mother Russia!”
After my daughters went to sleep around nine last night I enjoyed my free hour before my own bedtime by sitting down in front of my flat screen TV to enjoy my Bose Soundbar 300 and Acoustimass (subwoofer) wireless sound system. The setup is new, and I am still seeing what it can do. Wow! I pulled up youtube and watched/listened to all 43 minutes of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto, as played by Russian-American pianist Olga Kern. I have always loved Rachmaninoff. Critics claim his music is “sugary sweet,” as if the pieces were semi-cliched soundtracks for romantic movies. I strongly disagree. Young piano virtuosos supposedly line up to…
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The Life One Chooses: Then, Now, and Tomorrow
I read recently an excellent article by Jesmyn Ward about a book I teach each year, The Great Gatsby. It really struck home with respect to how the essayist suggests that the literary character Jay Gatsby resonates strongly for young people who see limitless opportunities as to what they can do with their life. I was once like this: young, full of dreams, everything ahead of me. But no longer. And not for a long time. Next month I am set to finish my 24th year of teaching. I am married, have two children aged 8 and 11, and work a full time job that exhausts me. I am a…
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Let Us Act Wisely
Protesters at the Gaza Strip border with Israel in May 2018. CHAOS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AGAIN It was approximately March of 1999 and I was on the steps on the backside of Congress listening to Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) speak to my students and myself. He was our local representative in Congress, and he had given us a brief tour of the House of Representatives and was making some final remarks on the steps outside. “And I promise to do all I can to help get our United States embassy moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where it belongs!” he concluded. Everyone applauded. I was chaperoning my students from the…
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Cross Country, the Teacher: Pain Tolerance as a Valuable Life Skill
Last weekend I was at the PAC-12 tennis championships in Ojai, CA with my daughter and father where we saw the UCLA men’s team defeat USC. As we watched these incredible student athletes compete, my father asked me the following: “Do you regret the decision to stop playing tennis, Richard? You could perhaps have been one of these college kids competing here if you had stayed with it. Of all sports you had the most talent for tennis.” His comments set me to thinking. I do not regret that decision. By the age of 12 or so, I had had enough of tennis. For years I had hit tennis ball after tennis…
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One Photo and What It Says About the Presidency
Last weekend there was published a photo taken at the funeral reception for Barbara Bush, the matriarch of the Bush family who died last Tuesday on April 17, 2018 at the age of 92, having been married to George WH Bush for 73 years. Americans from across the political spectrum (except for the far left) applauded Barbara Bush for her class and candor. She was lionized by historian Jon Meacham as “the first lady of the greatest generation” in the eulogy. The photo from the reception held large symbolic value, and not only to me, because it shows the entire American presidency for the last 30 years. Many commentators said something like this:…
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A Healthy Intellectual Life: Choices
‘Men have become the tools of their tools.” Henry David Thoreau So I have authored eight blog posts since I stopped posting to Twitter three months ago, and pretty much gave up all social media. Those eight essays cost me me many hours and much sweat to write. But they have also been enormously gratifying to complete. I remember hearing someone I very much admire tell my students that if they want to maximize their potential and be the best they can be, they should “turn off their cell phones and read one additional book per week.” His words hit me hard. They prompted me to reflect on how I…
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A Modest Proposal
AN EDUCATED WORKFORCE FOR THE “INFORMATION AGE” UNITED STATES “The U.S. economy’s largest and fastest growing sectors—business services, finance, healthcare and education—have little room for high school educated workers,” notes a 2015 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “Access to education is pretty much the arbiter of middle-class status,” said Anthony P. Carnevale. “It becomes the nut you have to crack.” How to help young Americans to secure a better future? There is no end to the list of items we could spend on “those in need.” We could help Americans by making more taxpayer money available for health care, after school programs, neo-natal programs, housing assistance,…
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After 25 Years, I Finally Do It
March 27, 2018 I can hardly believe it. After some twenty five years of abjuring the National Rifle Association and considering them to be extremists who were more trouble than they were worth, I am about to join them. I am going to join the NRA. I am going to give them my money. I will hold my nose while doing so, but I see I have no real choice. How did I get to this point? I remember arguing heatedly with a buddy about the the Federal Assault Weapons Ban way back in 1994. I was in favor of the ban. This friend, Jim, a passionate gun rights supporter,…
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The Wandering Mind Reflects: The Opioid Epidemic, Menopause, and Claire Dederer
Two weeks ago, in a burst of curiosity, I performed some fifteen hours of research on the current opioid epidemic that rages across the United States. Some 63,000 Americans died from overdosing on opioids in 2017, and every pundit seems to add that this means “more Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses than died in the entire Vietnam War.” The “opioid crisis” has been much in the news. The media sadly explains that drug overdoses are why the average life expectancy for Americans last year had dropped slightly to 78.6 years of age, a “statistically significant” drop of 0.1. This is the second straight year life expectancy for Americans…
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What Might I Have Done Wrong?
The other day I caught my youngest daughter reading in her loft bed at night in the dark at 11:00 p.m. I was more than a bit angry, as I saw her bloodshot eyes peering out at me from her bed; she would be comatose the next morning, short of sleep, I thought to myself. Getting her out of bed and to school on time on such mornings is difficult in the extreme. In fact, she was using the dim light emanating from her Kindle (ie. electronic book reader) to read the third Percy Jackson book that evening in the dark. Her grandfather gave her the box set of the five…
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Breaking Up With Social Media
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…
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Where To Go Next?
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…
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The Streets are Empty of Playing Children
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…
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Take the Best, Leave the Rest
I would say a few words, gentle reader, about two recent passions in my life: guns and yoga. Maybe it is just that I am a Gemini, that I would have hobbies so seemingly dissimilar (even antithetical). Yoga and guns? Are you crazy? Maybe. I enjoy them both. But I have highly nuanced feelings and thoughts about the firearms and yoga communities. Part of me is highly attracted, another part is strongly repulsed. There are the guns as tools and the practice of yoga — the specifics and the engineering. Then there is the larger psychology and sociology surrounding the followers and the culture of yoga and firearms. I like…
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New Years Resolutions 2018 Edition
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.
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A Letter To Colin
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…
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Twenty One Years and Counting
“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…
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Sex and Power and Coupling: Then and Now in America
“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…
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Richard Turns 50 Years of Age: Change and Continuity
“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…
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My Nightmare: Indecision and Incertitude
“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…
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To Keep One’s Sanity in the Age of Trump
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…
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Hello, 2017
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!
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Donald Trump, President of the United States: Reflection on an Election
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…
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Twenty Years is a Long Time: “Lines Written in Dejection”
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…
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October 9, 1996 to October 9, 2016: Twenty Years for rjgeib.com
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…
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Exhausted Parents and the “Hard Yards”
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…
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Summer 2016 Videos: Learing iMovie and Storyboarding
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…
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My “Guardian Angels”
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…