I have written before about the differential nature of memory, but I’d like to add a few thoughts. Frank Bruni and I share experiences in this regard, so I am sure it is not unique to me.

Because of my excellent long-term memory (and sometimes from ancient journals), I frequently tell people about epochal effects their words or actions from decades ago remain with me still. The typical response: “I don’t remember, but that sounds like me.” (the IDR response)

Another example:  in 1964 I was selling The Beech Street Bugle, a four-page mimeographed newspaper bearing the same name as my father’s paper 18 years earlier.¹ One of my readers was Cathy. I know it was 1964, because The Bugle ran an editorial endorsing Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater. ²

She was a good writer.³ She pointed out that I had started a sentence with the word “and” and told me not to do that. Fifteen years later, after a variety of amateur jobs (a few hundred thousand words), I felt a little thrill when my first professional sentence starting with the word “and” made it into the trade journal I was working for.⁴

Cathy and I had lunch a few times several years ago, when I had looked her up out of curiosity. I told her I had never forgotten that rule, and she game me the IDR response, and also said that a half-century later she wasn’t even sure it was good advice.

CONTINUED HERE

(or to put it another way

1. 1. Sold to many of the same people, that’s how stable our neighborhood was. ↩︎
2. 2. No doubt my editorial was responsible for Johnson’s landslide. Ironic, since his nickname in Texas was Landslide Lyndon (meant sarcastically, since his first election was a squeaker) ↩︎
3. 3. As evidenced by her years at the Associated Press. ↩︎
4. 4. Probably because its copy editing wasn’t up to AP, UPI and the Oregon Journal ↩︎

In college (as part of the Eugene Oregon  show), “My friend the attorney, Justin Case.” And “you must consider that aspect, and if you’ve ever had your ass pecked, you know what I mean.” I have been using them inappropriately ever since.

Ditto with everything ever said by Firesign Theater, including “you can sit here in the waiting room or wait here in the sitting room,” and “like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist,” which many people remember, but can’t place. Unless I say it, in which case they say, “Oh. Firesign.”

Now, to the point of driving my wife and daughters insane:

• “I’ll be there with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes.”
• “That (concept, object, noun of any sort) would fill a gnat’s navel and leave room left over for a Hollywood Agent’s heart.”
• Someone says “I’m going to change [implying clothes].” “No, No, don’ t change, I like you just the way you are.”

Happy Groundhog Day.  Be sure to take your annual look at the greatest movie ever made after you have looked at the best fan site: Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me .

A combination of a hip replacement and pneumonia meant that I was not much of an announcer or musician in the 2024-25 season. I did not cover myself with glory that final season; rather whatever is the opposite of glory. There is no longer room for me in the Tenor Sax section and the conductor has taken over announcing.

I enjoyed my time with the Danville Community Band: 25 years announcing, 19 years playing, after eight years playing and announcing for the Lamorinda Town Band. I will miss DCB.

If only I could drive at night, I might try for a seat in the San Ramon band. But I think the live music part of my life is over. I’ll just keep writing lyrics and recording. The Beatles gave up live performance for the studio; I will do the same.

There is some chance one of my grandchildren will want to play tenor someday, so I’m parking my sax at my daughter’s house. A 34-year-old Selmer Paris is still a pretty good horn. And if unplayed for a few years, will be as good as new with little oil and new pads.

• **The reason people from the British Commonwealth mispronounce the name of the light shiny metal is that they also misspell it. Aluminium, with a gratuitous I near the end (rather like all the u’s in “or” words, like labour). Here in the USA it is aluminum, as God intended, and pronounced that way. Don’t get me started on February and often.

• **A narcissist, completely devoid of empathy, dedicated to cruelty, and powered by ignorance, can become a political leader.

In Oregon, growing up, my father was obsessive about traffic safety. He was a professional truck driver who, literally, never had an accident or a ticket until he was in his 70s… and he started driving when he got his commercial license at age 16 (his father’s death required him to take over the family milk delivery business).

Obsessive?  Federal law required car seatbelts after 1968, but not retroactively.

Long before that, he installed after-market seatbelts in the family 1959 Thunderbird, in his own 1949 Ford pickup, and in the 1959 Volkswagen Microbus that was my first car.

He also so disliked the VW’s tiny rear stop/turn lights that he had custom “Mickey Mouse Ear” lights placed on top of the car at the rear. For years after we sold it, we would spot it driving around Portland. No mistaking it.

I was put in mind of this when I recently saw idiots driving too fast in fog and/or rain. In Oregon, we had the “basic rule:” doesn’t matter what the speed limit, never drive too fast for conditions. I thought this was unique to my uniquely enlightened home state, then discovered just now (thank you Ms. Internet) that it is universal in the United States. Ignore at your peril. And, alas, at mine.

It’s never too early to plan for Groundhog Day, Feb. 2 each year. Be sure to take your annual look at the greatest movie ever made after you have looked at the best fan site: Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me . My page only comes in 10^th on search results for Buddhism and Groundhog Day, which makes me think search engines are rigged.

I literally thank God every day for these gifts:

• *Another beautiful day in paradise
• *Wisdom
• *The strength to do good work
• *The mental and physical health of my loved ones and the world
• *My parents and Vicki’s for creating us (and specifically to Vicki’s dad for his generosity) and to God and Guru that we were available and ready that night.
• *The lights of my life, my wife, my daughters and my grandchildren.
• *My parents, friends, mentors and teachers
• *All the women I have ever loved, since I all of them rolled into one.
• *All the men who came before me, for not breaking the women and for not keeping them.

Vicki and I just celebrated our 46^th wedding anniversary. People seem impressed; it is certainly a rarity.

Apologies to Merle Travis (writer), Tennessee Ernie Ford and Pete Seeger (performers):

You stay 46 years, what do you get?
Another year older in love? You bet.
St. Peter don’t you come cause I can’t go
I gave my soul to the one I adore.

My father told me the secret to his 50-year marriage was two words: “Yes dear.” Recently a friend pointed out two more: “You’re right.” Mom also used to say, “We’ve been married 20 wonderful years, which is not bad out of 50.”

The first love song I wrote, You Put My Heart On A Silver Plate, begins “It was 40 years ago you see,” because I wrote it six years ago.

Both of my grandchildren like to listen to my album Paul Sings Paul on Spotify when they are in the car. My granddaughter won’t sit still for the professionals who have sung my songs: “I want Abba.”

Every time he hears Silver Plate, my literalist grandson says, “You have to change it Abba. It’s 46 years now.” I am going to resist the temptation to re-record it every year.

Every week brings news of another bone-headed return to work requirement. Is management deliberately trying to stifle productivity? Are they that stupid? ¹ I was the most productive staff member on every publication I worked for at CMP Publications. I could prove it if any copy of any of them still existed (except this one) .²

Remarkably, I was writing about Work From Home five years ago, despite the fact that there is only one correct answer: yes, whenever possible. I am not asking for a pat on the back, just living proof of the fact that an employee you trust can be a productive employee.

I know that neither the singular nor the plural of anecdote is evidence. I worked from home and the company benefited. You can and should, and management should celebrate it.

Below is my July 2021 item. Take a look at my CV: for a person who was rarely in the office³ , I did OK. I received annual raises at CMP and Ziff-Davis [however briefly]. I never had a bad review. I did not miss out on promotions. I was offered several better jobs at company headquarters in Manhasset, Long Island, N.Y. which I declined⁴ because I had already lived on the East Coast for six years, and that was plenty. There were technical challenges, but they were not insurmountable.⁵

And now, a demonstration of my prescience:

Work From Home

June 27, 2021

As the debate on working from home roars on, it is time for me to weigh in. Apparently 70% of employees want work from home, 70% of CEOs do not. I am on the side of the employees.

I worked from home for most of my 20 years at CMP, including several years during which I was the only WFH employee.  I know some of my fellow employees (including a couple of readers of this column) resented the “deal” I had, but it worked out well for the company. It is a matter of verifiable fact that I wrote one-third of the copy in InformationWeek during the tumultuous August of 1985.

It came about in an amusing way. I moved to Orinda, CA in April 1979 for a job in Cupertino, CA. I chose a town an hour away because that’s where my future wife owned a home. For my first six months, I worked three days a week in Cupertino, spending two nights at a Motel 6.

The situation was untenable. So, on a visit to headquarters in Manhasset, NY (in pre-PowerPoint days) I prepared a flip chart presentation for Computer Systems News’ lanky, sweet and daffy publisher, Tom Cooper, explaining why it was OK for me to work at home.

When I entered his office with an easel, his reaction was immediate. “What do you want?”

“To work from home,” I replied.

“If you don’t show me the flip charts, I’ll let you do it.”

In 20 years at various CMP publications, I spent many hours on I-680 driving to Silicon Valley for interviews and news conferences, and many more hours on planes to visit vendors all over the West. What I didn’t do was spend hours each day commuting to an office so I could eat bad food/snacks and drink too much coffee. I never missed a deadline―and I never missed a soccer game or school play.

1. 1. Every year after the annual report to the employees, my milkman father would come home and say “Everyone in management is an idiot.” Apparently, still true today ↩︎
2. 2. They were all lost/destroyed when United Business Media took over CMP. No archives please, we’re British ↩︎
3. 3. One week ever at PC Week ↩︎
4. 4. As recounted in Cupertino Star ↩︎
5. 5. Japan’s national broadcaster, NHK, came to my home in 2004 for a feature on the computerized home office ↩︎