31 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
Tags
Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks, Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom, Robert Caro, Susan Stamberg, The Passage of Power
I’m not sure what percentage of books folks read are read over the summer, on vacations, etc., but I suspect it’s significant.
So if you’re wondering what to take with you the next few months, here are a few possibilities:
31 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Family and Friends
The Happiest 5K Ever
by Elizabeth Miller
Ah, Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer.
Since it’s notoriously one of the most crowded weekends of the year on Miami Beach, I decided to escape to Denver to visit one of my best friends, Tiffany, who recently got engaged to her boyfriend. While we were researching fun things to do, she e-mailed me about something called The Color Run. I’d never heard of it. Of course, I Googled it and knew immediately this was right up my alley.
19 Saturday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
As I put together this post, and since my thoughts have turned to travel, I thought I’d make Articles of Interest.3 all about travel.
18 Friday May 2012
Posted in Go Sox
from Life Magazine
In no particular order of importance, here are some thoughts and some statistics rattling through my alleged brain at the end of the first quarter of the season:
18 Friday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
Thanx to friend Anita Rechler, the above picture, taken May 13, confirms that indeed Sam Wo’s is closed and has yet to satisfy the Health Department that it meets code.
17 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Elderly & Beautiful) *** (1/2)
The previews and descriptions of this film made me uncertain I wanted to see it, even though it is about a favorite place of mine in India – Jaipur. But something got me to go, perhaps a review or perhaps because we couldn’t find anything else we wanted to see.
16 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
I draw your attention to three very different restaurants in very different geographical locations. The prices vary widely, but the tastes at all three are worthy of your seeking them out.
15 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in Family and Friends
For those of you who enjoy pictures of the kinder, here are some of the latest, including a Kodak slide show of the gathering for my sister Janet’s 70th birthday in Atlanta.
T’s nice to see the next generation coming along so nicely, and their parents too.
(Randy & Corey are Janet’s sons. Jolie is Randy and his wife Val’s daughter, and Evan is Cory & his wife Julie’s son. Annie is my daughter, Abba (Edan) is her husband, and Eli and Abby are their children.)
Abby and Eli
13 Sunday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures, The Outer Loop
Over the last week I have read Robert Caro’s fourth book on Lyndon Johnson and attended a Politics & Prose bookstore “conversation’ between 
Caro and Politico’s Chief White House correspondent Mike Allen. I thought the book (606 pages) truly worthy of my week’s devotion to it. I enjoyed listening to Caro and getting a sense of the man, his humility, his solidity, and his insights, though I think Allen missed an opportunity to draw out Caro on many aspects of the book that deserved discussion.
If you definitely plan to tackle The Passage of Power, you need not read further than the end of this paragraph. Mark this site, and come back to it after you have read the book. Then read what is written below, and let me others know what you think.**
If you’re not sure if you want to read the book, or if you just want to get a bit of a summary and one person’s reactions, read the “Summary” and “10 Takeaways” below.
(If your time is limited, check out The New Yorker’s excerpt of the day LBJ went from believing his political life was over to attaining the most power he ever had — Nov. 22, 1963.)
08 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in Go Sox
Here is a list of the remaining games that are available for you to choose from to join me to watch the Nats in 2012.
One seat for each game is free to you, except you may have to buy me a hot dog and/or a beer and put up with my companionship for the duration of the game.
If you might want two tickets to any of the games listed below, I may be open to selling those to you. Note that the Friday, Sept. 7 Marlins game is definitely for sale.
07 Monday May 2012
Three TED Talks, by Elizabeth Miller
During the month of April, I tried to watch 30 TED talks in 30 days. TED, for those who don’t know, is an annual gathering of some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers out in Long Beach, California. Standing for Technology, Entertainment and Design, the conference usually consist of 50+ talks over four days that allows speakers and attendees to discuss a wide variety of topics. Most talks are about 20-25 minutes long.
Touted as “the ultimate brain spa” and a “4-day journey into the future,” the original conference has grown to include TED-sponsored activities all over the world and on a variety of more specialized topics (the environment, young people etc).
The conference has come a long way since it first debuted in 1984. You can read more abut TED’s history online. These days, it posts most of the talks by featured speakers online (though not right away), which is what motivated me to watch them from the comfort of my own home.
I didn’t quite get to 30 talks in 30 days. I probably watched more like 15, but these are my three favorites, on quite different topics.
01 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in Escapes and Pleasures
Having purchased two copies of Robert Caro’s 
new The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol.4), I was given four free tickets to a Politics & Prose bookstore event with the author.
Robert Caro will be “in conversation with Mike Allen, chief correspondent of Politico,” the newspaper/Internet/radio/TV outlet that focuses on what’s happening in Washington.
The event is Wednesday evening, May 9 at 7 PM at the Sidwell Friends School, 3825 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC.
I have at least two free tickets (and perhaps three) available for folks to join me.
First to ask…by email, Comment below, or phone.
01 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in The Outer Loop
Tags
As readers of this website may know, I am on a quest this year to try to understand how we know what we know and particularly how come good folks can differ so much on issues of politics and religion. Along that line, friend Dave Stang sent along the speech below he gave in 2007 in an attempt to school me on this subject.
(Also, see his Comment at the end of Articles of Interest.3)