A few years ago, I flew to Canada to attend a friend’s wedding. Towards the end of my stay I lost my mobile phone. There was a time when losing a phone would be nothing more than a moderate inconvenience, since they can be insured, quickly replaced, and have neither intrinsic nor sentimental value. They once were disposable items. However, in the past decade they have become objects of greater significance owing to the large amount of information they store and the multiple functionality they possess. We use them to send messages and emails, connect with social media applications and the internet, store contact details and photographs, wake us up in the morning and tell us the time during the day, allow us to pay bills and transfer money, listen to music and watch videos and podcasts, find our current location and the best route to our destination, and, from time to time, we even use them to make phone calls.
Continue reading “Reciprocity”Broken Bread and Poured Out Wine
With apologies to Abraham Maslow, I suggest our primary needs as 21st century human beings living in developed countries center around food and water, rest, shelter, and physical connection with others. Each of these needs can be fulfilled in basic, transactional ways, but can also be achieved in transcendent moments, allowing the bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid to leap upwards…self-actualization attained through the fulfillment of basic needs.
Continue reading “Broken Bread and Poured Out Wine”Dog day nights
Today was Thanksgiving in America (or actually it was yesterday – I’m writing this somewhat late). I took my son over to my parents’ house and we had a proper feast. I was responsible for the turkey, and I made it with an old fashioned oyster stuffing, and I don’t think I’m being immodest in saying that it was spectacular. I also made sausage dressing and brussell sprouts. My mom made what she calls “holiday potatoes” – which are mashed potatoes with a ratio of potato to cream and butter of roughly 1:1, similar to Joel Robuchon’s potatoes but she adds minced onions and it’s far better, since I’ve had the chance to have Chef Joel’s potatoes in a past life courtesy of investment banking expense accounts – and she also made glazed carrots, also spectacular, and candied sweet potatoes, which are so candied I can’t even try to taste them. Oh, and together we made about a half gallon of turkey gravy, which will clog our veins for the foreseeable future.
Continue reading “Dog day nights”Choice
I was texting with a friend yesterday about the dumpster fire which is the end days of the Trump presidency. He’s Canadian, one of the people whom I’ve desperately missed in the last year as the likelihood of an end to the border shutdown continues to recede into the mists of the future, so his perspective is a little different – but he’s an Albertan. Keeping in mind that Alberta is the Texas of Canada, that means he leans a bit to the right in his politics. That’s like saying San Antonio leans a little left in the political spectrum of Texas, though: just like even the Democrats in San Antonio carry concealed sidearms, the Tories in Alberta still love the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Continue reading “Choice”Dirt, Sky, and Water
In recent months Peter and Veronique have both written compelling, thought provoking essays about nature and about wilderness. Ironically, or perhaps naturally, I too have been thinking about similar topics for the last many months.
One of the many ways Texas is unique among states in America is that 95% of its vast acreage is in private hands. Only 5% is owned by state or Federal agencies and even at that, public land is often geographically remote and almost always behind a gate. Texas, for all its size, doesn’t really have the open public land present in so much of the country.
Continue reading “Dirt, Sky, and Water”