Skip to main content

Posts

  ≈ The Dirt on Spring: A Philosophical Guide to Gardening and Life ≈ ∞ Because Every Important Life Lesson Starts With Dirty Fingernails ∞ Spring isn’t officially here, but for gardening, it’s here There is something deeply meaningful about the start of gardening season. Every year, particularly up in the Northern parts of our Country, we begin again. In a world that’s often looking for perfection and penalizes mistakes, (“I can’t believe I didn’t clear the water”), gardening is refreshingly forgiving. It expects catastrophic shots, hands you a shovel and says, “Go ahead. Fix it, no strokes applied”. This is the time of year a garden begins to reveal itself. When the Forsythia are “good morning” yellow, and the periwinkle’s purple flowers join the plants natural bed of green, and the daffodils daffodil and the hyacinths hyacinth in so many shapes and colors, that's all telling us that it’s time to get back to work, sorry, fun… The Audit. So, let’s get down to business. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts
  ≈ Dogs. Can’t Live With ‘Em, Can’t Live Without Them ≈ ∞ The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same ∞ I was born in Doctors Hospital in Manhattan, which opened in 1929, a year that carries a certain… reputation. It was a small 14-story private hospital known as a "fashionable treatment center for the well-to-do." Sitting across from Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side, overlooking Carl Schurz Park and the East River, a beautiful oasis in a busy city. Elegant, historic, and, judging by its patient list, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Gleason, Clare Boothe Luce, and then me, pretty good company for a newborn. Gracie Mansion. If you visit NYC, visit Gracie Mansion, take a walk along the Hudson River My parents weren’t of the “well to do”, but the baby doc there served with my Dad during WW II and were fast friends, and friendship, it turns out, can occasionally outrank income brackets. So, I made my grand entrance into the world with a spectacular skyline ...
Post a Comment
Read more
≈  An Interesting Four Week Stretch of Lunar Influence on Our Lives  ≈ ∞  A full-blown spiritual medley of religious traditions  ∞ The “just before Spring” Season isn't only about finally being warm enough to start yard work , this year happens to host an accompanying full-blown spiritual medley of religious traditions that speaks to togetherness. And honestly? The timing feels… helpful. From mid-March through April multiple major religious holidays overlap in a way that feels less like coincidence and more like the universe over booked humanity to force a fundamental gut check.  In order, in that period, Ramadan, Passover, Easter, Vaisakhi and  Ridván  are observed, including many other meaningful observances woven into the season.  Different faiths. Different beliefs. Different histories. And yet… oddly familiar. If you step back just a little, it starts to feel like everyone brought a  meaningful  dish to the same basic table. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more
≈ The Sweet Smell of Not-Quite-Spring Gardening Is in the Air! ≈ ∞ Basic To Do List to get the Party  Started  😊 ∞ Before and After We “spring forward,” pick up an hour at the end of the day, and all of a sudden we gain an entire season’s worth of gardening ambition. That one hour apparently releases a major endorphin rush along with plans of lush gardens, thriving flowers, and a lawn that looks like it belongs in a magazine instead of… well… my yard. I mentioned in a blog last year that I garden, I’m not a gardener. Th ere’s a difference. Gardeners know what they’re doing. I own a bunch of tools, a couple of shovels, no expectations and a spectacular amount of optimism. The goal is simple, have fun, let the hobby be the reward, and try not to actively make things worse. Dwarf Nandina Firepower Shrub goes from green to red - color all year long With the snow finally melting its way into the ground, we start with the annual Walkaround, the official inspection tour to asse...
Post a Comment
Read more
  ≈≈ How to Have Your C “AI” K 🍰 and Eat It Too ≈≈ ∞ Teaching Kids to Think in an AI World ∞   “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Dan Millman.  Back in December, just before the holidays, we posted a couple of blogs about AI and children’s development, specifically the risks presented by AI toys. We talked about privacy, safety, and the slightly unsettling possibility that a stuffed animal might start offering life advice before the child has even learned to say “Mama.” This time I’d like to talk about the other side of the coin: the benefits of AI, the reality of it, and, most importantly, the management of it. Today’s kids will grow up in a world where AI is as ubiquitous as a key fob. So instead of asking whether children should use it, the better question might be how. AI is an extraordinary learning tool. It can explain complicated subjects, help kids explore ideas, and break down informati...
Post a Comment
Read more
Storms, Generators, and the Mystery of Why We Make Using Better Things Complicated. Up front, some transparency. This blog supports technology that a company we’re affiliated with uses as part of its product. If you buy their product through the links here, we may get a commission. This disclosure is at the end too, but we figured starting with it was the grown-up thing to do. But honestly, this isn’t really about selling anything. It’s about a technology that solves an obvious problem and, for reasons that remain slightly baffling, isn’t encouraged as logic would expect.   A week or so we enjoyed a spectacular blizzard. If you had nowhere to go, and I mean absolutely nowhere, it was beautiful. Peaceful. Snow falling quietly, trees wrapped in white, woods looking like a postcard, fire going in the hearth…basically a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. (I can’t believe I wrote that sentence, I’m not entirely sure what came over me, I apologize.)  Before the storm,...
Post a Comment
Read more