2020 Hindsight

Real Live Preacher: The Christmas Story Uncut

He doled it out in 8 parts over the course of this month. With part 8 posted, he posts the entire story, uncut.

Merry Christmas!

Don't drink and drive

What happened to a young woman named Jacqui when the car she was in collided with another one, whose driver had been drinking. The story behind it. [via Tom Maszerowski's My Likes and Dislikes]

Jonestown, 25 years later

Jeff Jarvis remembers. He worked at the San Francisco Examiner at the time.

Life Stories 4 year anniversary party Sunday

In Venice, CA. Sunday 7:30 pm. Performances, creative exercises, prizes, and (if this death march I meet tomorrow's milestone) fun cookies and other yummy goodies will be there for the enjoying. Cool, The {fray} storyblog linked to it, too!

What happened at the Reunion

A story of an encounter at a 15th high school reunion.

It was Jim Mussina, all right. The same brutal eyes I remember from grade school. That leatherneck haircut. The wide-spaced nostrils, like a mean pig. The cinderblock chin that could shatter an anvil.

But what the hell, Jim Mussina was no threat to me. Any more. I nodded at him, Humphrey Bogart style, a combination of “hello” and “what the hell do you want?” But Mussina looked at me like he didn't know me.

“It's me,” I said to him, “Mike Finley.”

I swear a look of fear came over his face when I said that. Which was great. I would have paid $50 to see that look.

Fray Day LA this Friday 7-11pm

Prolly is too late to get into the open mike (did that last year), but an email alerting me to the San Francisco Fray Day put me on the trail of the LA one. In Studio City.

Tough competition for this in Pasadena for Physics-fans: Stephen Hawking is going to be speaking at CalTech's Beckman Audiorium. Friday, 8pm. Gotta get a ticket (free) but who knows what kinda campout there'll be for the ticket line.

Oh, and Jack Valenti will be speaking at CalTech Thursday night. Free. Lotsa interesting events at CalTech in October. Valenti, Garrison Keillor, Dean Kamen, Al Franken.

Voices: Stories from 9-11 and beyond

The Dream lives on

Billmon writes on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Go read it.

There is, however, one thing I've always sworn to myself: The world of my childhood dies with me. My children are going to grow up free -- or as free as I can possibly make them -- of the taint of racism.

When the temperature's gonna be three-digits today....

...gotta think about cooler things, such as last Sunday's final twilight stroll around a small lake in the San Bernardino mountains before heading back down the hill:

How beautiful is the weekend

How beautiful is the weekend, spent away in the mountains. Consider the lowlander, who thinks, "Oh! I will snooze, and I will hike, and I will read, and I will write, and I will work a little on that project thingie..." and when she gets to 6800 ft elevation where the air is cool and much dryer than the humidity below, all her intentions to work evaporate. She sits on the front porch listening to the chittering of birds, and the thrumming of hummingbird as it flits to the feeder. She watches the fishermen and women around the lake in the distance, but mostly she finds herself paying slow and careful attention to the sensation of the sun on her skin. Work? Ha! This is how it always is. No doubt the next trip she plans, she will say the same things to herself before she leaves. She accepts that folly. Better to tell herself anything, it's most important that she actually does return to the high-altitude place.