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I keep having a dream I am on a body board and surfing the airwaves high above Laguna. I’ve been a surfer all my life and understand ocean waves.  The best are thin, steep ones that break in a collapsing line you skim across at great speed.   The worst are thick crunchers that...

America is a place of turmoil.  While I was growing up in Newport Beach, there were TV stories of fire hoses spraying black people and race riots in Los Angeles. Then there was war in a place called Vietnam and my parents worried I would be called up and killed. None of it was...

The last one, my youngest, Harrison, graduated from Sage Hill High School. My first was Margarita Aguilar, whose whole family had come to live with mine (all nine of us in 2,300 square feet and not enough beds).  It was she and brother and parents; and me and my wife and two...

As I perambulate about the community, I often am asked what I do, as in, who are you? My kids are not certain, since I do not seem to have a normal job with normal hours like other fathers. Yeah, I go to meetings and talk on the cell and text and email. I’m on boards. I write...

The assistant director, Howell, was herding us into place.   It was not easy because 80 percent f the cast and crew were Spanish-speaking.  Howell did not speak Spanish, so as he yelled, a translator followed with his own Spanish yell, like an echo. We were in Uruguay, which is...

My friend, Laguna’s blithe spirit January Olds, created her own skincare line January Labs.  She rolled out the line about 18 months ago and now has gained national distribution.  Last summer she gave me several bottles of her product and insisted I prominently display them in my...

It is a brand new year, but before we plunge into it, let me share some thoughts for the past year, 2012, may it pass blissfully into our shared consciousness. 1. The political pundits told us the presidential election would be too-close-to call.   The polls had them neck-n-neck,...

When I was a kid, my family lived in old Corona del Mar and opened presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning.  It was a tradition from Kansas, where my folks came of age in the Great Depression.  We never got elaborate presents. They were small and inexpensive. ...

Jason, my teenage friend, I know you are dead and cannot read this letter, but I had to write it anyway. You just wanted to go drinking with your friends. Then you foolishly got behind the wheel and got yourself killed, and killed two innocents in the process. I am dreadfully...

I urge Laguna Beach citizens to vote “yes” on Measure CC because our very quality of life is the issue.  It is about creating open space within Laguna Beach forever. Some background.  In 1990, our city cut a deal with the Irvine Company to buy some 2,000 acres comprising the open...

Seven of us dined recently at Hotel Laguna on the outside terrace, overlooking the waves. The two women in our group, aged 24, wanted it that way.  They are from Afghanistan and had never seen the ocean. A surfer required a definition. Their clothing enveloped them and partially...

My girlfriend Kim Bowen was born in London and went to St. Martins College of Art and Design, the Harvard of England’s artistic community.   From there, she became a writer/critic for London’s fashion press and a regular at The Blitz, which was like NYC’s Club 54 where the young...

Encountering Nature’s Force My kids and I are off on a weeklong rafting trip through the Grand Canyon on the mighty Colorado River.  I have done it a half dozen times and love it. I take the “luxury” experience (yeah, right) on a big, sturdy raft that holds up to 15 people and...

The thing about conservative Republicans is they are great haters.  They are great at standing up to the foe, declaring war, wagging it with savagery and then stomping all over their slain opponent. Democrats parse it to death. Is he really such a bad guy? Doesn’t some of what he...

  Homeostasis  “…is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition…”  The planet Earth is a classic homeostatic system. It tends toward stability, which in scientific terms is called “stasis.”  It also is a...