Travels with Phil Five – The Earth Room
Yep, just what it says! In Soho in lower Manhattan is a floor of an office building filled with dirt. There is even an art foundation to maintain this most unusual Urban Sculpture. One of the trippy little things I take people to in New York City. Enjoy! Read more here: Wikipedia
Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus
I have been accused of being a soppy sentimentalist. As cynical as I am about so many things, there are some things that are just nice! This is one of the most famous editorials ever written. It was in 1897 in the New York Sun. I saw this reproduction of it in 1988. It has […]
Travels with Phil Four: Carousels
Carousels, Merry-Go-Rounds, call them what you will, they are FUN! I have taken my grandkids to the one in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The woman I recently lived with for ten years took me to the one on Martha’s Vineyard Island, and it had the Brass Rings!! Her name was Martha also. Her […]
Why do I say I’m a Liberal?
When someone asks my politics, I say I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist. What? I then send them to 8 minutes and 30 seconds into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when Graham Chapman on his Hobby Horse as King Arthur asks the peasants: “Who lives in yonder castle?” And they answer. I must insert some movie […]
Richard M Nixon & National Health Care
Nixon was the ultimate Oedipal figure in American politics. He did so many good things, but his pride led to his downfall. He negotiated SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) with Brezhnev, and persuaded the Senate to ratify it, the first reduction of nuclear arms in history. He signed the Clean Air, Clean Water and […]
If you have enjoyed these, could you all please help me?
I started all this twenty years ago just for myself, but a few friends I shared the stories with really loved them and wanted more. I spoke in the Opening Act about why there had been a hiatus before beginning again this past year. I have been urged to pay various web services to advertise […]
Travels with Phil Three – The World’s Biggest Chessboard
Maybe not, but they claim it is! I am NOT a good chess player but enjoy it enough that I carry a rollup rubber chess board in my car with a bag of cheap plastic chess pieces! At one job in Miami, two colleagues and I retired to a park every day with our sandwiches […]
Why I spell G-d with a dash in it
In Judaism the four Hebrew letters (referred to as the Tetragrammaton) that spell out the name of G-d are NEVER pronounced. We say Adonai, The Lord, or other substitutes when it appears in the liturgy. Why? It is referred to by the Rabbis I have known as the Ineffable Name of G-d. But the real […]
The Ecology of the Everglades
This was a summary of the research we conducted. It is an excellent discussion of the ecology of the Everglades. From some hand-written corrections in my inimitable scrawl on the manuscript I know I contributed to authoring it. The Everglades is commonly considered a swamp. It is not. It is a broad, shallow, slowly-moving river […]
Anthropologists Can Too Have a Sense of Humor
By now most of you should know I was an anthropologist. When I left graduate school ABD (all but dissertation) many people expressed sympathy for not being done. “They didn’t make me check my brains at the door when I left” That part of my education has stood me in good stead in everything I […]