Act 1
Me, speaking into the Perplexity AI browser’s microphone: “How long is the French Camino?”
What Perplexity heard: “Hello, this is a test.”
What Perplexity replied: “Hello! Test received loud and clear. What’s on your mind?”
Act 2
Me, a little perplexed with Perplexity: How long is the French Camino?”
Continue reading“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” — Oscar Wilde in an 1889 essay.
In the avalanche of outrage and imagery pouring out of Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, one scene stood out to me, but not for reasons related to Good’s horrific shooting.
A video shows dozens of Minneapolis citizens sliding down an icy slope to join scores of other protestors on the far side of a wintry landscape.
Where had I seen this before?
I snagged a freeze-frame, and it took only minutes to recall.
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Showing up late for a party stoned and tipsy wasn’t very original in late-1969, though I was getting damned good at it — and tired of it all — a rudderless college drop-out, dodging the draft, hiding out in Washington D.C. in the shadow of the Selective Service.
I was fast becoming a mess.
Nobody at John and Linda’s party noticed – even when I stumbled back against the bookshelf and slid to the floor while Jenny from West Virginia badgered me with her latest career dilemma: Airline stewardess? Or a psychologist?
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I’m a little quick off the mark, but my first full-blown fantasy for 2026 is already in:
I want to buy a 20-bedroom castle on the Isle of Rum in the Inner Hebrides. (I think it might include the whole Isle of Rum. Not sure.)
I don’t think I need to say more.
But I will.
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Behind me, fresh rainwater surged down Calle Terraplen like a full-blown arroyo wash. The rain beats a staccato rhythm on the roofs of curbed cars. I was inside Hotel Hacienda El Santuario’s nearly empty dining room, chilly but dry.
On the small table before me was a hot cup of black coffee and a curious but tasty postre of cornbread topped with ice cream, caramel sauce, and chopped nuts.
Not more than 20 feet away, through the archway into the open-air courtyard, pianist Javier Garcia-Lascurian and cellist Guillermo Sanchez Romero were working their way through a heart-rendering version of Saint-Saëns’s “Le Cygnet” (The Swan). Huddled along the barely sheltered walls of the courtyard sat the hardiest classical music audience I’ve ever seen. Some had umbrellas up to supplement the scant coverage of the eaves.
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My cousin Maura Manley passed away on Friday. She was seven years younger than me, but the first of our adult cousins to go.
About the same time, this post popped up on Facebook. And a picture of my mother in a hospital bed in Florida. She and I spent her last Thanksgiving together, although I had to eat alone in the cafeteria and she had the institutional fare in her room. Still, we spent the day together. One of our last.
I got to spend time with Maura this summer, when she was happy, healthy, and reveling in all the family gathered for a reunion in Pennsylvania. There were a lot of us.
I’m posting this here because, well, because it keeps family from disappearing, as a time when family is starting to do just that.
In the picture above: Yes, I’m the one who looks like a butterball turkey on my grandfather’s lap. Eight months old. My older brother, Jim, is to the right. He was an old hand at this Thanksgiving thing, a veteran. You can tell by how jaded he looks.
Our folks, Bob and Pat, are at left. At right, my dad’s siblings Don and Mary Lou. Clearly hadn’t met their forever partners yet, but soon. All three of the kids were married for life. They did that in those days. Don and Janet had five sons. Mary Lou and Bill had six daughters and two sons. Jim and I ended up with six more brothers and a sister.
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PENNSYLVANIA — A gaggle of geese threads its way slowly up the Clarion River, paddling against a lazy and shallow, but persistent, mid-summer current. There are 10 geese, all mature. Long, elegant black necks, white wings. No fuzzy goslings.
They zig and zag, snatching bugs from the air and small fish from the river. Between the feasting and the faffing and the current, their progress is slow.
One by one, they follow the leader into the leeward side of a small rock outcropping. In the calm, they gather strength for the arduous upstream paddle ahead. Deeper, faster water awaits the geese.
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I’m done with “push” content from newspapers, substacks, pods and podcasters, bloggers, social media platforms, conspiracy boosters, angry MAGAs, fundraisers, revolutionists, ah-has and ma-ha’s, political shamans, alarmists, talking heads, Chicken Littles, grim reapers, Beltway pundits, scribblers, cartoonists, and diatribe specialists.
Or as another noted crank once put it, I’ve had it up to here with “Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.”
All I am saying is don’t give push a chance.
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Sometimes you are handed a gift, in this case, a funny and talented writer named Papa Joe Grappa. A mutual friend sent me Joe’s Substack column titled “Questions for Jesus When He Comes Back.” It is really funny, as it should be for a guy who was Jay Leno’s head writer for 20 years.
Here’s the thing, as I was reading Joe’s questions, I was hearing Jesus’s answers.
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Hi! And welcome back to the popular shame game “So You Think You Can Rant?” where it’s your words against the troll-a-verse! I’m your host, Seymour Bittame!
For those of you who haven’t played before, the rules are simple:
A scenario pulled from a real social media post will be put up on the screen and our four panelists will have one minute to respond to it in the worst possible ways imaginable. Oh, yes, without violating FCC rules on taste and profanity.
Audience laughs.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 