[While others perused handicrafts, I encountered a work of living art. This Nubian tyke could not take his eyes off my hat. I offered to let him try it on--what a picture that would have been--but he was too polite.--Photo courtesy of Kathleen Buckner]

You notice it even before you… Read full post »

[I've been upstaged by lesser leads. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Buckner]

Forget—just try-- Khufu’s pyramid (the Great). Me? I waited nearly seventy years to see his kid’s implacable and immovable yard ornament, the Sphinx.

Big deal.  I was in for a humbling put do/… Read full post »

["Hey, Congressman! Who you callin' exotic? I was bred and born in LA!"--Jojo, our magnificent spider monkey who ended his days in a small zoo. There, he loved to teasing little kids (go figure) into playing catch with him if they had tiny boxes of raisins in their hands.]

Before t… Read full post »

[Yes, sacred and revered spaces require admission fees. More importantly, they call to open eyes and minds.]

How often to you get to experience the sun rise on the Nile?  On the top deck of the M.S. Hathor, it was invariably quiet. Even the nervous insistence of shore side auto/… Read full post »

Esna held two miracles. The first occurred mid-morning on the upper deck, as most of us marveled at another sunrise from the Nile’s vantage point.  Suddenly one, then five, and gradually dozens of packaged tablecloths and scarves were falling on us from the sky.

Not really. Our ship, slowe… Read full post »

[The handsomer face in the foreground is Oskar's.  No we weren't setting out to go trick-or-treating. We were beginning a half-hour ride to the 7th Century Monastery of Saint Simeon.  Aswan, West Bank, October 15th.]

Sometimes your expectations for an adventure are pre-program… Read full post »

[A meeting of new friends in a very old place, the Luxor Temple built between 1390 and 323 b.c.e. Ramses II pushed me over till I was to the L of the obelisk. Note: I did crop this photo, but I would never have chopped off the tip of the obelisk.… Read full post »

Writing about media is tantamount to taking your own picture inside a hall of mirrors. As it turns out, messages are themselves media (pace  Marshall McLuhan). Besides, the subject is dusty; the glassy amusement park novelty craves some Windex.

Nonetheless I have been jarred into educating mysel… Read full post »

 I suppose it’s the way some poems get written; something else I only wish I could do. As it was, I only managed some very rich time off—or out.  The rain made me do it.

When I left for an afternoon walk the sky didn’t seem that chancy but I had… Read full post »

There’s a painful wakeup call for revealing just how important a friendship is. It’s an accident but when it happens we realize the value such relationships hold for us. We set up and anticipate a long overdue reunion, then circumstances prevail that rob us of the promised meeting and exc… Read full post »

Last Sunday I took a late-morning nap.

No sooner had I resigned myself to such a timetable than I was reminded of certain magical days in my boyhood when I was coerced into similar late-afternoon respites.  In those days it was because I was going to an evening performance of… Read full post »

Two sittings, two conversations, three folks. An unpredictable number of open or closed doors.

The chance to learn is a charmed constant. But the lesson is invariably not so much derived from subject matter as from the participants and how their discussions change them; how their conversations work t… Read full post »

Last week, pavement contractors poured and planed a large section of our front driveway. That process took hours; the curing took days.  This morning I walked over the result. Quietly praising the technical expertise, I marveled at what must be the chemistry behind words like cement and concrete… Read full post »

[70 years ago. Fresh and harmless. Photo courtesy of Doris Britton.]

[Last evening. Worn and . . .Photo courtesy of Jean Moreland.]

Yesterday at 5:45pm PDT, I finished my 72^nd trip around the sun. I was with warm friends on the occasion, having already been greeted/… Read full post »

[Bill Cain performing the "Chef-AH-loo Knot." The real mystery was that he ever let me saddle him with such a tired piece of magic.  Royal Lichtenstein Circus, Colorado Springs, 1972.]

 Even in my fifties, I would saunter into magic shops across the country. Lots to be learned/… Read full post »

Fitting two weeks of necessaries into a carry-on shoulder bag is child’s play compared with cramming 4500 years into two weeks. Those are the positive parameters for my projects for awhile. The negative boundaries are easier: avoiding photos and videos, no matter how dramatic, of pyramids, Copt… Read full post »

 Although I’ve never wanted to be a squirrel, I have enjoyed one of those huge muffins you can purchase just about anywhere there is some grade of brewed coffee for sale to hurried folks.  Someone in more of a rush than even one of our neighborhood squirrels had unwittingly dropped a… Read full post »

[There was elation and genuine joy in the precision and interdependency experienced while presenting such an act.  It could never be taken for granted.  Nor could such a "high" be presumed to sustain itself beyond the ring.  L-R: K. Cloughley, K. Curdt, C. Gentile, … Read full post »

[Okay, so the Bard could dash off over 102, 326 lines in 23 years! We're older than he was and we should know better than to hurry up when you're in the presence of genius.]

Internal script: Why the hurry, Weber?  It took you seventy-one years to get this far. … Read full post »

[L: A winner. Joe Reichlin performing the aerial straitjacket release, 1989, Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC. Dicey?  Metal can fatigue, even the cable, the pulley or the eye-bolt.  No more dicey than getting into S… Read full post »

When I first read Andrew Weil’s advice on the healing effects of walking in beautiful surroundings, I paid it short shrift.  His 1997 work, 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, made compelling sense in general but I thought that admonition a bit lightweight.  I have long since come to value his… Read full post »

[Comic John Salazar helped us resurrect the ancient vaudeville gag, "Professor Zogah, King of Memory" for the 1974-'75 season.]

I was going to write this piece this afternoon, but I’m afraid if I don’t get it down now I’ll forget what I wanted to say.

Perhaps th… Read full post »

[Every good photographer can get subjects to laugh at themselves, even clowns.  L-R: Jens… Read full post »

[Sculpture on the High Line by Sarah Size: Still Life With Architecture. The stooped figure at the left is not part of the sculpture but one of the many artistic gardeners  minding the upkeep of a complex living landscape.]

There’s a beautiful  surprise/… Read full post »