Family

Today my granddaughter graduated from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California. I watched via a streaming video. The auditorium was full of proud parents, grandparents, and friends. My daughter sent me a photo of she and her husband with the new graduate. This brought to mind a memory of my own high school graduation that has quite a bit of pain associated with it. Of course, after 59 years -- I was in the class of 1966 -- both memories and pain fade considerably.  I'm still bothered by my mother's action though. Which was, choosing to not attend…

Bragging can be annoying, but I'm claiming the Father Exemption, because I can't resist sharing the news about a company being bought for a reported $80 million that my daughter was the first employee of. I learned about the acquisition of Barton Perreira, a high-end California eyewear company, by LVMH, a luxury conglomerate (Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, and Dior, among others) from my daughter, Celeste Vos, a few days ago. She no longer works for Barton Perreira, having left to become the Vice President of Sales for Silhouette, another eyewear company. But she has fond memories of her time…

We're all going to die. That's 100% certain. Death follows life with a cosmic inevitability. The big question is: Will we die a good death? This morning my wife, Laurel, learned that her older sister, Lynn, had died last night. Naturally there were tears. But not much sorrow. Because Lynn died a good death.  In fact, a very good death. Exactly the way most of us would want to go, Laurel and I definitely included. Lynn and her husband, Randy, had driven to Colorado from their home in Kentucky. Randy took her there as a romantic gesture.  He had proposed…

I consider myself genetically lucky. While I had nothing to do with being born as Conrad Hilton's godchild (he was my mother's uncle, and my grandmother's brother), I got to read 443 pages about the Hilton family courtesy of J. Randy Taraborrelli's book, "The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty." Few people are able to have a book describe a relative in such tantalizing detail. Taraborrelli must have put a heck of a lot of work into his research, which included interviews with people who could cast light on the life and times of Conrad Hilton, the famous…

Aside from college and my baby years, I've lived in six houses during my lifetime. They all have meaning for me, but the house in Three Rivers, California that was my home from about age eight to eighteen holds the most intense memories. I think it's because those ten years marked my transition from a child to an adult. Everything was fresh and new. Changes -- physical, mental, social -- were happening rapidly. So it was a delight to get an email from the couple who had recently purchased the Three Rivers, California house where I grew up. Finding me…

After listening to countless (almost) ads for Ancestry.com on the radio, a few weeks ago I decided to take a plunge into the waters of my DNA. Well, let's make that watery spit, since my saliva is what got sent off for testing. I don't know what took me so long to learn what countries my recent ancestors likely came from. Procrastination, I guess, since my rather unusual family history seemingly would make me a natural for an AncestryDNA report. I know quite a bit about my mother's side of the family. I know almost nothing about my father's side,…

When Father's Day comes around I don't spend much time reminiscing about memories of my father, since I only spent one hour of face-to-face time with him in my entire life. (These are the only photos I have of my father. Obviously I don't remember these baby moments with him.) I wrote about this disturbing experience in an appropriately-titled blog post, "One hour with my father." Here’s a contrarian Mother’s Day story about the one hour I spent with my father. Note: the one hour, period. This wasn’t the best or worst hour, nor the happiest or saddest hour. It…

Here's what I did on my summer vacation, teacher. No, wait... I'm 65 and retired. Every day is a vacation now. (Yeah, right; if you believe that, just wait until you retire.) Laurel and I got back last night from a family reunion -- her side of the family -- in Madison, Indiana. Madison is on the Ohio River, a bridge away from northern Kentucky. We stayed at Clifty Falls State Park.  Not surprisingly, I saw (1) cliffs, and (2) falls, at the park. This is a view from an overlook of the Big Falls (on the right). It's straight…

My wife and I do not consider ourselves great artists. However, if you wish to acknowledge us as such after watching the video we made today, feel free. When art just happens; when a soul-stirring creation is born from the ever flowing well-spring of spontaneity; when the actions of man, woman, and dog flow together in a never-to-be-seen-again moment (well, 105 second/moments, to be exact) -- such can only be called great art. Though of course Laurel and I are too humble to call our You Tube video that. Again, it is for others to decide whether the title of…