If my disabled life seems to be narrowing in scope, damned it also doesn't get wedged. Like a bit of flotsam caught between the rocks. Stuck. Jammed. Going nowhere, not even downstream, fast. But before we get into the details, does it matter? At this stage of life, there cannot be a more worthwhile question. Time's winged chariot is flapping along at a record pace, and since chasing after it requires considerable effort, should one bother? Arriving in the Twin Cities for an annual conference, Read more [...]

There is a difference between parking on the lower slopes of Twin Peaks and successful microsurgery…but it is too subtle to discern. No, to the naked eye they are one and the same. For once I had wedged my Dodge Caravan between a driveway and a BMW, The available airspace amounted to less than one inch. Go, Paul. All this after a preemptive strike on the nearby mobile phone shop, a highly successful raid that netted if not a new iPhone, the promise of one. Yes, there I was in a suburban mall Read more [...]

Ever feel like changing your mobile phone service? I mean, after all, it is not a radical notion…is it? That's why after years of overpriced and technologically backward service from AT&T, you've decided to throw a little business to T-Mobile. What the hell. What the hell, indeed. Turns out that your phone has to be ‘unlocked.' Why? Did you recall ‘locking’ your phone in the first place? Precisely what it is locke in my piddly little iPhone is totally beyond me. In fact, I seemed to have Read more [...]

I don't know what it is about the calendar currently in use, for the last 2000 years or so. But I find it singularly challenging to understand Tuesdays and Fridays, those being the days when the city fathers of San Francisco take it upon themselves to run a street cleaning machine up and down our hill. Naturally this machine is accompanied by a traffic warden who issues tickets to those of us who are calendar-challenged. At $71 a ticket, one would think it was high time…. But it has been high time Read more [...]

As I've said before, It's a tangled neuromuscular web we weave…so if you drop the occasional stitch, no big deal. The weave pleasantly opened this very morning when my massage guy failed to find any significant muscle strain in my neck or shoulders. So there, body. Take that, age. Still, it was good to have a massage. Relaxing. We need all we can get. We also need all the political economics we can get. And I count myself very lucky to be attending another autumn course taught by David Peritz, Read more [...]

A few days in California's Carson Pass are not renowned for inducing strain. This is where people go to stare at the wonders of igneous rock and the miracle of running water…while taking in a few trees and the odd marmot. The state park ranger at Grover Hot Springs will tell you that, yes, the browning trees are showing the effects of California's persistent drought, but it could be worse. The Carson Pass actually had normal rainfall last year. Of course it wasn't enough to make up for the four Read more [...]