Year before I encountered Micahel Josephson’s Character Counts radio essays, one of my favorite things to hear on the radio was Charles Osgood‘s voice. From 1971 through 2017–a period of 46 years–Osgood hosted The Osgood Files, a daily radio commentary that ranged over everything from current events, to whatever happened to be on Osgood’s mind…
Between 1994 and 2002, while living in Studio City, California, I commuted every weekday to Santa Monica, a drive of about 20 miles. I had not yet discovered audiobooks and the countless hours of these commutes were spent listening to various local radio stations. I frequently listened to KNX-1070, a news radio station. This was…
The mail on March 18 arrived with two packages: contact lenses for Kelly and my latest Field Notes quarterly edition, “Signs of Spring.” The timing was just about perfect since this year, the vernal equinox is March 20 (tomorrow, as I write this). This edition is something of a milestone for me. By my count…
In the taxonomy of categories that bookstores–online and physical–provide, the category of “science” is frequently far too broad. For one thing, it is often combined with other categories, as in “Science and technology.” When that happens, the science part seems to lose out. Each Tuedsay, when new books are released, I head over to Audible…
Welcome to my blog series, “Practically Paperless with Obsidian.” For an overview of this series, please see Episode 0: Series Overview. I have been a dedicated user of Field Notes brand notebooks since 2015. Since then, I have rarely been without a Field Notes notebook in my back pocket. These Field Notes notebooks represent my short-term…
A large package was delivered today from the New York Times. I was puzzled. I didn’t recall ordering anything from the Times, but then again, I sometimes don’t remember if I washed my hair in the shower, a possible side-effect of achieving the half-century mark. Curious, I opened it up and found inside a large…
NOTE: When you think you’ve gotten to the end of this post, read on. It is a little different than my usual posts, as will become clear once you progress past the end. Think of it like those scenes that popup in motion pictures after the credits have rolled. When I was about five years…
Here is what I read this week. Some of the articles/posts may require a subscription to read them. This number in parentheses after the books are as follows: # of books I’ve read so far this year / # of books I’ve read since 1996. Books Finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich…
I had to make–for me–a rare call to the bank to get some information about the title to a car we’d paid off. I put this off for as long as I could because calling support for just about anything is one of my least favorite things to do. Alas, there was no option to…