On The Fly

I remember it like it was yesterday . . . a biting cold snowy winters’ eve. The wind howled through the trees, a grey landscape blanketed with a new-fallen snow, reflecting the dim glow of streetlights. Like fluffy white sand the snow drifted across the streets and yards. Trudging through the snow that night burned this scene into my memory for one reason, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Delivering the Canton Daily Ledger in 1968, my first job. Bundled up, running from house-to-house, invited in to get warm, provided me glimpses of the television special destined to become a classic. That memory was triggered by a mid-summer visit to the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, CA. A long way from blistering cold wind and deep snow drifts. However, as we strolled the galleries vivid impressions of how Peanuts shaped my life as a small boy flooded my thoughts. The Peanuts Cartoon Strip is the heart and soul of the collection. The Museum’s collection represe...

If you’ve ever seen Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks, you may recall one of the first scenes in the movie; railroad workers in the scorching desert being driven by a stern taskmaster, a blistering, parched, scene. One worker drops from exhaustion and dehydration. Taggart barks out, “Dock that Chink a days pay for nappin’ on the job, can’t be more than 115!” I could never really relate to that scene until last years trip to Las Vegas, teaching Diamond Grading class at AGS. We endured 115-degree days for weeks on end. This year, thank goodness the weather is more temperate. Returning to the same hotel it’s apparent that things change from year-to-year. New buildings sprout up, employees move on, businesses change and empty lots are filled - but what remains untouched is nature’s beauty - the glowing landscape of the Mojave Desert in Nevada! Without fail, my early morning walk treats me to panoramic views of the mountains in Summerland bathed in the golden sunlight of Red Roc...

“The climb gets harder - its a steady 10 mile climb before we reach the top, then its downhill all the way back to the car,” said Margaret De Young.  “Don’t tell me that right now!” - as I struggled to maintain a steady six-mile an hour pace climbing out of the Lake Meade basin in Las Vegas Nevada. If you think you’re in shape let Margaret and J.T. set you straight! It had been over a year since seeing Margaret and her partner J.T. My first free weekend in Las Vegas would be touring the mountainous landscape on J.T.’s Trek road bike that he had so carefully outfitted for me that Saturday morning of our first ride. Sixty-four miles over two days, “a casual weekends ride”, not so fast . . . The story begins on Saturday March, 3, 2012, we agreed to meet at 10:00 a.m. to just take a bicycle ride around their neighborhood in Vegas. That first ride turned into a 25.8-mile undertaking with an elevation gain of about 958 feet. Five miles out we started our ascent - that cl...

Einstein at Griffith Observatory While reading Einstein His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson I’m captivated by the childlike wonder that Einstein approached what most overlook as an everyday occurrence, time. In Einstein’s Theory of Relativity logic and observation dictates that time is a constant, yet his theory postulates otherwise. Scientific thinkers use self-evident truths that seem reasonable but are not. Einstein possessed the uncanny ability to focus on problems with a singleness of purpose. His thought experiments allowed him to imagine beyond the principles of his time to see an expansive universe that defied Newton’s laws. Let’s examine his thinking style and how we can use that methodology to also go beyond the confines of our daily existence. Einstein epitomized the logical thinker. Someone who is able to apply that mode of thinking—about any subject, content, or problem—in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzi...

Early Morning Sprinkles For a moment, picture your mind as a blank slate just waiting to be coded. Is it possible to re-write the firmware that is your minds operating system? Is your firmware open source code or a closed system? What a captivating concept! Today the social and psychological sciences tend to take the view that Human Beings are 'formed' socially and psychologically by nature as well as by nurture and that there are inherited traits that society can build on and to some extent modify. Early in the seventeenth century, it was statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon who, first strongly established the claims of Empiricism - the reliance on the experience of the senses - over those speculation or deduction in the pursuit of knowledge. John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding restated the importance of the experience of the senses over speculation and sets out the case that the human mind at birth is a complete, but receptive, blank slate...