Not There Yet

For one brief, shining moment when I was in my early twenties, the sun and stars and all the planets aligned and I was able to bill $5,000 in one month. In 2017, that’s the equivalent of over $15,000 or, if you prefer, $180,000 a year. Through what turned out to be a happy accident, I believed I had officially hit the big time.

It turned out to be a disaster...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on April 29th, 2017.

The judge, even in traffic court, sits on a raised platform that ensures that you look up at him and he looks down on you. It’s majestic and intimidating. This was my impression as I entered the courtroom to fight a speeding ticket I had received a few weeks previously. It’s not that I didn’t think I had been speeding when I had been caught doing exactly that, but rather I wanted to test the notion that the state still has to make its case. They have to provide evidence, the absence of which means the guilty get to go free.

And thus hung my entire defence...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on February 17th, 2017. (header photo, cover art and sound clips from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey)

Nobuo Fujita was determined to bring his family’s katana with him 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The samurai sword had been passed from one generation to the next for over 400 years and accompanied Fujita on every important journey of his life. If samurai tradition was to be respected, he would eventually pass it down to his son.

Fujita had a different plan, however. He had been invited by the Junior Chamber of Commerce—the Jaycees — to the 1962 Azalea Festival in their home town of Brookings, Oregon. This was an annual Memorial Day event for the town on the southern coast just north of the California border. Nobuo Fujita eventually accepted the invitation, and then whatever difficulties there would be transporting the katana. It was essential to his trip because he intended to present the sword to the people of Brookings as a gift of peace and friendship.

If that plan didn’t work out, however, he would need the katana for another, equally important purpose: to commit seppuku, the hideous ritual suicide reserved for samurai who had brought shame on themselves...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on September 26th, 2017.

We had just about given up on a return to Rocky Knoll. Since our arrival on the Oregon Coast the wind had been blowing steadily from the southwest, which does not favour the slope which is about 10 minutes south of Yachats. But then, we were walking into the Green Salmon and looked up at their little wind turbine and — voilà — the wind had shifted to the northwest. After a short visit for their amazing coffee and baked goods, we packed ourselves and all the gear into the car and headed south. When we arrived, the wind was blowing in a perfect orientation to the cliff...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on November 11th, 2016. (header photo and cover art by Michelle Klement)

The word derives from the Spanish mesteño, which is defined as “wild; untamed; ownerless”. By letting the tongue dwell on the roof of the mouth you get to mestengo, a “stray beast”. From there it’s a small step to the word and an idea that has entered into our modern mythology.

Mustang.

Mustangs are wild horses which roam the North American southwest. These were initially descended from horses which escaped, were turned loose or stolen from...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on August 15th, 2016. (header photo and cover art: “Wild Horses in the Prairie” ©Giorgio Galano on iStock)

I knew my father’s cardiologist for a dozen years before my father needed him.

In the early 1980s the medical community was just starting to build applications for patient record keeping using the new personal computers coming on the market at the time. Through circumstances I am totally unable to recall I was introduced to an eminent cardiologist—I’ll call him Dr. Don—whose research work required him to collect data on his groundbreaking coronary angioplasty cases. I wrote a little code for him and it remained an entirely professional relationship except for the occasional lunch at the local tennis club. They were awkward discussions...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. This essay is the story which provided inspiration for The WorkNotWork Show, a podcast dedicated to finding and speaking with those, like Doctor Don, who are living their dream careers. A version of this essay also previously appeared on Medium on October 14th, 2016. (header photo: ©Jim DeLillo on iStock.)

Despite what you might think, not one second of Apple’s podcasts are actually hosted by Apple. “But how can that be”, you may ask, “when they ‘host’ hundreds of thousands of them?” It’s simple. When you download a podcast ‘from Apple’ what you are really doing is using them as an index — a pointer, if you will — to a file located somewhere else. That’s why you might find some podcasts really sparkle on iTunes, downloading quickly and streaming promptly, while others really stink. I know because I’ve done it both ways. Incidentally, not stinking is a great way in increase download counts, as I eventually discovered.

But I‘m ahead of myself...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on April 24th, 2017. On June 10, 2017, Apple announced Podcast Analytics which will be launched later this year. This is very close to at least one aspect of what was predicted in this essay. (header photo: Shunichi Kouroki via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

I was stunned to hear, a couple of days ago, that Chris Froome had just won his third Tour de France riding for Team Sky, which has won four of the last five. Stunned not by the achievements so much — although they are pretty impressive — but rather the fact that another Tour had come and gone and I had hardly noticed.

There was a time, not that long ago, when my years were marked by the annual rite of July which involved spending untold hours in front of the TV watching the rolling chess game play out over...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on this date in 2016. In 2017, Chris Froome and Team Sky won the Tour de France again, making the totals in the article a little out of date. Thanks so much for listening. (header photo: Arrivée de la 2e étape du Tour de France 1969. CC BY-SA 3.0 NL)

Take any population, large or small, and imagine creating a spreadsheet with one row for each woman, man and child. Now, imagine the first column in that spreadsheet for a given row contains the amount of healthcare spending that person — or others, on their behalf — will want over a given period of time. For the purposes of this exercise, this first column is cost-no-object. If there the smallest possibility a given medication or therapy will help that person, throw its cost into column A for that person’s row.

To help with this exercise if you are doing it on behalf of your child, wife, husband or parent, think about what medication or therapy you would be prepared to forego in order to make sure there is enough to go around for everybody. This is a trick question: the answer is very likely zero...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. Your comments about the podcast are welcome below and if you liked it, please share it with your social networks. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on May 8th, 2017. Thanks so much for listening. (header photo: Florence Nightingale in the hospital at Scutari in 1856. Used under Wikimedia CC 4.0.)

The absolute single best day—no, the single best moment—of my entire year is sitting in the parking lot waiting for the Starbucks® to open on the Friday before Labour Day. With a full tank of gas, a smooth open road ahead, decent weather and nothing but free time it simply doesn’t get any better. In a year defined by its constraints it is the instant when I feel...

Listen, above, or if you prefer you can read the essay instead. Your comments about the podcast are welcome below.