I read that the blogger Heather Armstrong died yesterday. Struggling with depression and alcoholism, she committed suicide. Heather was 48 years old. She left behind two teenage daughters, 19-year-old Leta and 13-year-old Marlo. Yikes. Many women claim that Armstrong helped to bring about the “warts and all” style of oversharing of Internet writing in the early 2000s. She was the harbinger of social media activist aggressive opining about life or whatever – Armstrong was acclaimed for her raw, angry, and honest writing on her blog. “Radical candor,” some called it; “inappropriate over-sharing,” others would say. By all appearances, Armstrong helped shape the ethos of online confessing, in the good and…
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“Terrorism” and “Evil” Showed its Face Last Weekend: Memetic, Yet Again
Another horrible shooting took place last weekend in Allen, Texas. Another deranged individual decided, for God knows only what reason, to show up somewhere in public armed to the teeth and start shooting strangers. They would commit random murder against as many as they can, before the police or anyone else nearby, puts them down. My first response was to wonder what freak of nature was behind this. A disaffected loner? Another person with no friends, no hope, and no end of rage? Almost seven weeks ago a trans person in Nashville, Tennessee attacked a private Christian school. This time in Allen, Texas it appears to be a Latino guy…
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“Every morning I am out there running. Rain or shine, no matter what, I run every morning.”
Every year for one day I allow a Marine Corps recruiter to come talk to my high school seniors. I debrief my students the very next day about the presentation. I say to them, “Everything that guy said yesterday is true, but you should also keep this in mind…” I explain to them the other side of the coin: the advantages and disadvantages of military life. That is fair. What I get out of these visits is learning about the recruiter. Three of the four sergeants who have come to my class were Latinos from working class backgrounds. They were impressive. They talk about the opportunities they had to travel…
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In Praise of “The Ojai”
The Indian Wells Tennis tournament, sometimes called the “Fifth Slam,” sees the very highest professional tennis played anywhere, similar to Wimbledon or the US Open. But the “BNP Paribas Open,” as Indian Wells is formally called, is also a zoo: some 440,000 people attended this year, and the parking and crowds are off-putting. Indian Wells is an ordeal for these reasons, in my experience. But The Ojai Tennis Tournament is different. It is much smaller and more approachable. It involved not just a few hundred participants in the pro tennis tour, as in Indian Wells. The Ojai sports tennis players all the way from juniors to community college to Division…
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Peggy Noonan and Technology, Tribalism and “Troll Nation” – Very Online and Very Angry
This Internet experiment – my person webpage – is pretty much as old as the World Wide Web itself, having been started in late 1996. So I have had occasion to watch the popular use of the Internet develop over time, and have commented on how it has changed, for the good and the bad. So I read with interest Peggy Noonan when she opined in her column “AI In the Garden of Eden” about how she, too, was excited at the dawn of the Internet Era, but has since soured on the Internet and technology as it has been used in real life. Noonan speaks about the “brutal downsides”…
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The Pageant of Life Unfolding Right In Front of Me
I was sitting there reading the newspaper two days ago around 5:15 pm. The school day had ended, tennis practice had concluded, and at last I had a moment to myself. So I was grabbing a bite to eat and communing with the newspaper. And then I saw a former student of mine entering the restaurant. He is now a Captain in the Ventura County Fire Department, and he was followed by another former student also working serving in the VCFD. We talked animatedly for a few minutes. They were both now married and had young baby daughters at home. I remembered them back in high school, and they were…
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Community and Fellowship: Easter Weekend 2023
So last week I lost a tough doubles tennis match in a super tiebreaker. My partner and I were the better team on paper, but that does not always matter in sports. On any certain day, the lower ranked team can win. It just didn’t seem like our day last week. Our shots were a few inches out, and their shot’s a few inches in: it happens. My body didn’t feel good, the other team was on, and we lost. A few points here and there and it could have gone the other way. But there hung a vibe on the court that day which seemed to say, “Today is…
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I Get Hit By a 9mm Bullet
Luckily it was only a ricochet, so it didn’t hit me with full force. But it stung, and I felt as if I had been kicked high up on my left thigh – like someone smacked me with a stick, very quickly but not deeply. I hopped around with my jaw dropped. “Ouch!” I was at a firearms training class, and we were running a drill where the instructors were moving targets straight at us and we had to draw our weapons, step to the side, and fire at the charging targets. Perhaps shooting at a slight angle caused the ricochet. I limped over and picked up the slug which…
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100,000 Views!
So I received the announcement today that my blog received its 100,000th visitor. That is visitors to my blog, not my website. The number of visitors to all the pages of my site in the past 26 years would be a much larger number. But still. It gives me pause. On the one hand, if I did not want anyone to visit my website, I would hardly have taken the time and expense to put it online. Nevertheless, I neither advertise my website nor seek to expand my audience. The usual business model for personal blogs and online work is to try to increase the traffic and then monetize it.…
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“It’s OK, mom. You did fine.”
Some ten years ago my father told me that his first wife – my mother – had confided in him that she very much regretted losing her temper and yelling at her young kids. My mom felt as if she had done damage to us by screaming. My father never repeated the story, but I never forgot it. Now he is almost 84-years old and has forgotten most details from those days. But I do not doubt my mom told him that, as nobody would make up such a story. My mom died back in 1996 when I was 29-years old. But I remember back in the early 1970s when…
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Murderous Avian Flu and Locking Down Schools in Florida
My younger daughter came up to me yesterday morning as I was eating breakfast and told me breathlessly, “Daddy! The schools in Florida are going into lockdown again. There is bird flu spreading rapidly there!” Having had her school locked-down and her fourth and fifth-grade school years essentially canceled back in 2020, my daughter was sensitive it might happen again. The trauma of those days returned when she heard this dramatic news on social media. She was alarmed. Knowing more about the larger context of locking down schools than her, I was highly skeptical. After the disaster of closing schools during the COVID-19 lockdowns, I was pretty sure nobody was…
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“Tell them I am old-fashioned.”
AI and Human Evolution I read Thomas Friedman’s Op-ed piece today about Artificial Intelligence this morning with interest in the New York Times today. His essay makes ambitious claims about how Artificial Intelligence will affect almost all aspects of how we live and work. Here is one typical quote from that article: “You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents mankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.” Thomas Friedman “Our New Promethean Moment” I read the Wall Street Daily everyday and the…
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“First we kill all the lawyers”
Lawyers Depending on how you look at it, I have been blessed and/or cursed to have been born into a family of lawyers. My father, various uncles, brother-in-law, cousins, my cousin’s husband – there are lawyers everywhere in my family tree. My brain tells me to respect lawyers. They play a vital role in society, I reason to myself. My heart tells me, in contrast, that most lawyers do it for the money – and they are mostly brawlers hired to fight for you. I know, I know… being a tax lawyer is different from being a real estate lawyer which is different from being a courtroom litigator who brawls…
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{(16 + 16 = 32) x 2 = 64 + 20} = 80
A few days ago I wrote an essay reflecting back on my older daughter’s 16th birthday. Then I read and reflected about an essay I wrote a few days after this daughter’s birth 16 years ago. Wow. How the time has passed. I won’t say the time passed quickly. There were hard years of childrearing, and those did not pass quickly. From one point of view, the days and months from 2007 until today were full of labor and seemingly endless tasks at home and at work. The past 16 years were intense and often my time was not my own: family and work obligations took most of my time. …
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My Oldest Daughter Turns 16-Years Old
So it happened. My oldest daughter just turned 16-years of age. In about three months she will get her driver’s license. With the ability to drive (ie. freedom) I suspect she will be gone from the house with friends a good chunk of the time until she leaves for college. So it has been with the children of my friends who can drive: they aren’t around much. Teenagers get busy, and their friends are everything. My daughter is growing up. How do I feel about this? I am proud. My daughter is a stellar student and a standout athlete, and my wife and I have had almost no serious reason…
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“Wow, Coach, This Place Feels Like a Prison!”
It was approximately 3:17 pm when we arrived at Adolfo Camarillo High School with my boys high school tennis team. Our team arrived in two vans, with the name of our school on it; it was obvious who we were and why we were there. But the security guy at the guard checkpoint at the front of the school was skeptical. “Who are you? What time are you expected?” After a short discussion on his radio while we waited, he told me, “You are 45 minutes early for your 4:00 p.m. match. Why don’t you go to the nearby Starbucks and park there until that time?” My blood pressure started…
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We learn not for school but for life.
Ah, the written word. How I love it. How I crave it. My brain drinks the words in. I remember having flunky post-college jobs where I would be doing some mindless-rote tasks, and I would be bored and seek out intellectual nourishment. I would work as a bartender at the Olive Garden restaurant, for example, and sometimes I would just read the menu because I would need the written word – anywhere I could find it. I’d read rumpled newspapers customers left behind. Anything. That was over 30 years ago, but I haven’t changed. I am still curious. Reading is how I learn, and writing is how I process new…
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Teen Girls and FREEDOM and COURAGE: Anti-Fragility
Sometimes I think back to when my oldest daughter was in fifth-grade and I would pick her up from the bus stop at 3:10 pm. She would exit the school bus and walk over to me exhausted and in tears. She arrived to me in quite a state. I realized her friendships took a lot of work, even at 10-years old, and the trials and tribulations of life on the elementary school yard were significant. But I would get her a snack, give her half an hour to decompress, and my daughter would be good for the rest of the day. I still think about this often. My daughter was…
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I Don’t “Love” Anything About Myself
A journalist approached me last week and asked, “What is it you love about yourself?” I was taken a bit by surprise, as she pushed a microphone towards me for my response. “I don’t love anything about myself…” I stammered. Immediately I felt as if I had answered wrong. “Does anyone else say they love something about themselves…?” “Well, the last lady we talked to said she loved her smile.” As usual, I regretted talking to the press. Some journalist would ask me a question – on the record – and I would make a statement. Then they would use a small part of my statement in the eventual news…
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On the Anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
I have not posted about the war in Ukraine since around the time it started, but it has been in my thoughts. I think back about the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine over a year ago, and the predominant feeling now is sadness – the vast loss of life since Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Now it is one year later. What do I feel on the one year anniversary of the start of the war? I feel sadness. This conflict begins to approach 20th century scorched-earth military campaigns with vast loss of life on all sides. The civilian casualties, and likely war crimes, from…
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A Rule Violated Today: “Avoid Lawyers and Doctors, As Much As Possible”
One of my mantras is the following: ‘“It is a good year when you don’t have to see either a doctor or a lawyer.” Yesterday I dealt with both lawyers and doctors. Why did I break my rule? And in the same day? Let me explain. Firstly, I served my day of jury duty. I had been called up to perform my “civic responsibility” in the justice system last fall, but as I was coaching high school tennis in the afternoon I postponed it as far into the future as possible. That meant I had to go to court yesterday, Valentine’s Day. The court would give me no further extensions.…
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“When Was America Great, Daddy?”
Recently I was showing a video of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941 – with Japanese CGI dive bombers zooming down on unsuspecting American battleships, and actors recreating the panicked scene with bombs exploding around them – as my audience watched the violent action unfold. Then I stopped the video and said the following: “This obviously is the shocking start of WWII for an unprepared and surprised United States, and the road to victory would be long and arduous. Some commentators would later claim that these men and women who endured the Great Depression and then fought and won WWII were the ‘greatest generation’ of Americans ever.…
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I Find Myself at a Crossroads
Who am I? Such a simple question, so difficult to answer. What do I like to do? How do I want to live? What am I good at? What am I not good at? What does my mind and heart tell me? What do proven results in life tell me? What is my role in the world? Where do I fit? Where don’t I? One would think the older I get, the better I could answer all these questions. And I have gotten better. But then as I age the answers to these questions might change. In fact, they do change. But how exactly? And when? I have heard experts…
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Welcome Anno Domini 2023
Happy New Year everyone! Last month I wrote about the holidays and said the following about New Year’s Eve celebrations: “I never enjoyed a hard-partying New Year’s Eve staying out late, or the hangover the next morning. But I have enjoyed the past twenty or so New Year’s Eves when I quietly stay at home, think over the past year, and then plan for the future. I write down my resolutions for the new year, go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and wake up refreshed and ready to go the next morning. Hence January 1 is always a good day for me. A new start, a fresh beginning –…
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“Richard, Your Body is Your Friend”
Remember this. You have been wont to use your mind to command your body to perform. As if your body were separate from your mind, and not part and parcel of it. Your mind in the driver’s seat has its advantages: you get a lot out of what God has given you in terms of athletic achievement, and that is no small thing. Your body needs exercise – craves it, in fact – and you give it what it wants. And then some. But, but, but… You don’t always listen to what your body has to say. Your body constantly is speaking to you, but you don’t always listen. This…
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The Holidays Sort of Suck
Why? I have no problem with the holidays themselves – Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve – especially Thanksgiving – I am a fan of that holiday dedicated to appreciating what you have, which everyone can and should celebrate. But Christmas has become so hyped and commercialized that I endure rather than celebrate it. And New Year’s Eve was always overrated as an opportunity to party with friends. I never enjoyed a hard-partying New Year’s Eve staying out late, or the hangover the next morning. But I have enjoyed the past twenty or so New Year’s Eves when I quietly stay at home, think over the past year, and then…
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This Life Will Break You
I talk about abortion with my high school students, or about the losses on Civil War battlefields, or the movie Wit about John Donne’s poetry and the process of getting sick and dying. I watch my students very closely for their reactions to human tragedy: the dying of a sick toddler, the casualty of a father/husband on the battlefield, a cancer patient wasted away to next to nothing – – do you see what I mean? Year after year I watch the faces of my students as they witness all this in my humanities classes, and I scrutinize their emotional reactions. What are they thinking? Can I tell how they…
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I Slip the Noose
So yesterday at midnight EST, and 9:00 pm PST, the end of year USTA rankings for 2022 were released online. I had been waiting painfully for this moment of judgment, as I wrote about six weeks ago. The event one year ago when I got bumped up to 5.0 was still on my mind. All year long I worried about the USTA re-ranking on December 1st. They finally arrived. The crucial question: Would I remain a 4.5? Or be moved up to a 5.0? Would I be able to remain at my present level and continue to compete in local USTA 4.5 leagues and enjoy the company of my friends…
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The “Natural Candle” of Life-Giving Intellect
Posts on my webpage go up and down in popularity with Google, for God only knows what reason; I can see all the statistics in the Word Press app or Google Webmaster Console. I don’t care enough about getting attention for my posts to do a deep dive into Search Engine Optimization in the Google Search Engine. But I wonder at how the gods at Google point people towards one of my URLs, and then another. It is all a great mystery. Some posts are popular, and then fade. Others become popular, and then aren’t. It is all about ever-changing search engine algorithms. Who knows? But the other day one…
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Let Twitter Sink Into the Sea: #riptwitter
At the moment I am watching everyone talk about how the social media network Twitter, bought recently by billionaire Elon Musk for 44 billion dollars, is supposedly going under. Long unprofitable, Twitter with its new owner is firing employees and urging those who remain to work harder – and many Twitter employees are quitting, too. Last night they claimed to have locked all the doors to the main Twitter building and entrance was highly restricted. The company seems to be in crisis. Twitter has long since had an outsized influence on American elite culture. It does not have that many members compared to Snapchat or TikTok or Facebook/Instagram or Google/YouTube…