Category Archives: Personal
Turkey Mike’s Big Game
Our son Michael got his name from Carolyn’s great-grandfather Michael Patrick Donlin. No, this wasn’t the “Turkey” Mike Donlin who starred for the New York Giants. Our Mike Donlin lived in Ireland during the Great Famine. He spent his youth scaling sea cliffs, stealing eggs from sea gulls to fight off starvation. We don’t have [...]
Mimi
Our daughter wants access to photos of Mimi from her summer camp; an excellent excuse to cease neglecting this blog … Back on June 17, just three days before Mom’s heart attack, we adopted this darling gal from Humane Society Silicon Valley. She had lost her home when her family of seven years had moved—another [...]
A Letter from Duska
Following is a letter that my sister Duska wrote me from Angleton, Texas, back when I was a 15 year old heavy metal fan in Tulare, California. I doubt that I had become a Rush fanatic yet. This was during my rebellion against Top 40 Ad Nauseam, just before Moving Pictures was released. There is [...]
The Best Laid Plans of Little Girls
When our son gets home, the first thing he does is run next door. He and the boy next door play on the same t-ball team, and spend a lot of time together. The last time I remember talking to the boy’s father, Jeff, something had happened between our boys—our son had scratched their son’s [...]
I’m no Einstein
Our daughter took up violin just last summer. I recently mentioned to her violin instructor that I’d like to take some lessons as well. I’d bought a violin awhile back, and I’d been practicing along with our daughter. I’d played violin and viola as a boy, when I was about as old as she is [...]
Chuck & Cora
Sometimes I stop in Hanford or Tulare on my way to the Sierra Nevada, and look at my old homes, neighborhoods, and schools, trying not to raise the suspicions of the current residents. Of all the kids I knew during my elementary school years, Chuck and Cora are among those I remember most. Cora was [...]
The Two Souths
We had moved to South Carolina or South Africa four times by the time I turned fifteen. During those four stints, we lived in seven different towns. The principal motive for all this motion was to participate in mass conversion of Blacks to the Bahá’í Faith. Mass conversion wasn’t just something that we were drawn [...]
My Black Catholic Heritage
There is a community just outside of Walterboro, South Carolina, known informally as “Catholic Hill”, with a remarkable history. Back in 1856, well before Emancipation, a Catholic church building burned down. The white membership disbanded, leaving the parish, for all practical purposes, defunct. St. James the Greater Source: The Catholic Diocese of Charleston Fast forward [...]
Got Roots?
Genealogy is often a silly pursuit, but it can sometimes tell you something about yourself. I didn’t think too much about researching my family heritage until I was on the cusp of parenthood. It was at that point that I began to wonder what I would tell my kids about it. That was in late [...]
Welcome!
At present I am reading three books: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Jack London’s Martin Eden, and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I suppose they’re all books about knights-errant, be they holy fools or creatures of fate. Not entirely unlike my friend Mr. Norland. It’s slow going, but each book is holding my attention, as disloyal as [...]