Like most families, the nostrums necessary to palliate childhood ills were administered by my mother and grandmother. One, however, came from my father, and until last night, I thought it was his invention.
Winter in Southern California is barely winter. But colds, coughs, and bad dreams can besiege a child in any clime.
I was six. My [...]
I am next to Miss Jones
It was 1953. I was eight. I had known California for over five years and knew bits of New York and Pennsylvania through my parents’ stories.
Miss Jones was from someplace between the coasts. I’ve forgotten her first name, and I’ve forgotten the state. Iowa, maybe Nebraska. She was my fourth [...]
Perhaps based upon a well-known, anatomically difficult, consensual act, Wells Fargo has sued itself in a Florida foreclosure case reported upon by foxbusiness.com last week:
“Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium….As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is [...]
Treswick was a big cat, a bad cat. He was, his owners averred, tres wicked.
It was 1967. I was a first-year graduate student living in Peabody Terrace, the married students’ housing, a walking bridge across the river from Harvard Business School. These were tall, narrow buildings, four units to a floor, all sharing a long [...]
My brother Doug writes about his afternoon with my four-year-old grandson:
When Ethan and I walked outside, we had no specific plans. We knew only that the sun was shining, the spring birds were singing. It was warm and we were going to explore the backyard. There were so many possibilities. But once he saw the [...]
When we were very little, my brother and I had a record entitled Little Songs on Big Subjects. Sung by The Jesters, one of the first groups to record commercial jingles, the tunes, written by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer, emphasized tolerance. Zaret, who died in 2007 just a month shy of 100, told me [...]
James Michener’s short story collection, Tales of the South Pacific, a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner in 1948, was eclipsed a year later by South Pacific, the blockbuster Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein musical that includes some of the most memorable songs written for the stage. One song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” includes this verse:
You’ve got [...]
Commander Whitehead
Mixers…and medicine.
In 1968, Commander Edward Whitehead came to Harvard Business School to give a talk on the continuing importance—in the face of computers and other rapidly advancing technologies—of people in industry. (A similar, and rather drier talk he gave in 1955 is here.)
Perhaps the first CEO to become his company’s advertising spokesman, Commander Whitehead [...]
Business is slow at the Marin County Indian restaurant that Ram owns. In my opinion, he should take this time to do some cleaning in the back, but instead he leans on an elbow and tells me about his last visit to Delhi.
“A friend whose car I am borrowing is warning me if the [...]
Passersby were forced to walk in the street as the Tour de Healdsburg cycled (without forward movement) on the sidewalk outside Costeaux French Bakery in a vigorous and joyful celebration of Bastille Day.
Riding for the unheralded Le Musée Historique team (Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society) were
