OZY Daily Dose

My life is a matrix of measured time. My kids peg me on the spectrum, but routines are what have made it possible for me to do anything of worth in my life, and so it is that, in general, I'm a prime candidate for assassination since my schedule varies very rarely. My paranoia prevents me from keeping any kind of calendar that anyone else could get a gander at, but doing the same things at the same time is both predictable and pleasant.

It was a small town between the Baltic Sea and a river. You could walk across the whole town in less than 30 minutes. We had one elementary school, one cemetery and one church, one bridge - and nothing going on until summertime, when tourists came to spend their vacation at the sea. I was 7 or 8 years old, and the only organized activity we had was a karate class.

The road to the Maze is steep and windy. After zigzagging our way up Tavares Bastos, a hilltop favela in Rio de Janeiro, we step into a narrow alleyway where neighbors chat and hang laundry out to dry, their doors open for relief from the summer heat. Inside the Maze, there's a panoramic vista of Guanabara Bay and the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain.

Over a two-year period, filmmakers embedded with cops in Flint, Michigan. The Netflix docuseries Flint Town reveals the everyday struggles of an under-resourced police department.Born from water, flint is a hard rock that can spark fire. As it turns out, so can its namesake town in the Midwest, as evidenced by a 2016 water crisis that pushed the community of Flint, Michigan, into the national spotlight.

For hundreds of years, the mantra of fatalism has been a necessary salve for millions upon millions of Indians. The very concept of karma, that our previous lives are to be blamed for what we're suffering (or not) in the present, is an escape valve that makes a life of extreme poverty at least slightly bearable. But the tides have been shifting in the world's largest democracy.

Before my kids woke up, I drove my sick, ancient cat, Stan, from Baltimore to Philadelphia in my junky Rav4. I assumed we'd arrive at his clinical interview, meet the surgeon and her grad students and be gently turned away.

They wore vests festooned with patches, Kangol hats tilted to the side and Haggar slacks or jeans, and they carried inverted golf clubs - for clubbing, not golf. Standing atop and astride milk crates spread across the sidewalk, three teens laughed and glowered at the pedestrians who had to step into the street to get past them, a procession of women, kids and, most appallingly, able-bodied men who figured that the better part of valor was getting home in one piece.

To experience a real Mozambican meal in pristine surroundings, you don't need to travel far from capital Maputo's rich neighborhoods, where everything seems fake and standardized. Drive down the coastal road, Avenida da Marginal, north to the Praia da Costa do Sol beach. It's here where ordinary Mozambicans come to relax, with the ocean breeze and African rhythms for company.

Years ago I visited Treetops camp, the site of a majestic baobab tree that stands in the heart of one of the oldest and largest of Zambia's national parks, Kafue National Park. It still holds a special place in my heart. Sitting around a campfire, I learned the legend of the mighty tree, how it had been scorched by the flames of an unrequited love. It takes 10 people with outstretched arms, hands linked end to end, to encircle the trunk of "the tree that eats maidens" - or Kondakamwale.

As was standard for the era, the NBA's Indiana Pacers held a three-day rookie and free agent camp in 1979 before their formal training camp. Featuring recent college players and journeyman pros, the camp was unremarkable except for the historic inclusion of a 5-foot-9 shooting guard from UCLA named Ann Meyers. A 1993 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, she changed her name to Ann Meyers Drysdale after her 1986 marriage to Los Angeles Dodger pitching great Don Drysdale.