Pine Nuts: Monarchy Is Out of Date Always Has Been
Benevolent as Queen Elizabeth was as a monarch, she could have been even more useful, and eminently more noble if she had been a schoolteacher. Unfortunately, for every Queen Elizabeth there is a Henry VIII in the closet. Who among us is too young to remember the jingle of Henry’s six wives? “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” This is not to forget the expression Henry had fixed permanently on his face, an expression that suggested you had just knocked over his pint.
Pine Nuts :: the Importance of Merriment Part Two
Lucretia Fudge was the Wailuku Librarian, and I ask you, what better name could a librarian possibly have? She was, as are all good librarians, rather stern. There was a drinking fountain on the deck outside the Wailuku Library back in the 70’s, and David Sakugawa and I stopped by there one day for a drink while out for a run. It was plenty hot that afternoon, so I started splashing water from the fountain onto my body, whereupon Lucretia Fudge stuck her head out the window and admonished, “Young man, this is not a public bath!”
Pine Nuts: What If?
What if former President Trump decides to run again. I’m not a political prognosticator, but even I can foresee a bumpy road ahead, and it hangs on the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment that bars any person from holding office who has engaged in insurrection. Did he? That is the $64 question. Whether he did or not, the lies will be circling the globe before the truth gets its boots on. Each state will have to decide whether to bar Trump from being on the ballot or not.
Pine Nuts: The Importance of Merriment
It was only a photograph, yet it pulled on my heart strings. It was a photo of soccer fans celebrating a win by dancing gleefully in a London street fountain, a scene of unbridled merriment to make any heart sing. Glancing at that picture for five seconds put five days on my already long life. It occurred to me that one of the most important things that has gone missing over the past few years, along with civility, the supply chain, and climate, is gaiety, an effusion of joyfulness in celebrating a small victory, perhaps someone else’s small victory.
Pine Nuts :: Mark Twain's Third Party
In his 1870 essay, “The Curious Republic of Gondour,” our mutual friend, Mark Twain, recommends a unique advancement to our present system of democratic suffrage. Twain actually expands upon the voting procedure we will be working with this November, a system that is propped-up on vast numbers of the undereducated to vote, and vast numbers the ultra-wealthy to donate.
Twain has much loftier ideas than gerrymandering and the suppressing of voter rights. His ideas, in fact, are designed to expand our enfranchisement, and here’s how…
Pine Nuts Piper's Opera House
This lucky boy was at Piper’s Opera House last night, lucky to be alive and onstage to present, ‘An Evening with Mark Twain,’ where, as a benefit for the Comstock Foundation, I was able to close a long loop with a flood of memories…
Pine Nuts Greatest Athlete in the World
At last, and finally, this summer, the International Olympic Committee reinstated my hero, Jim Thorpe, as the gold medal winner of the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States. After winning both events by wide margins, he was hailed by King Gustav V of Sweden as, “the greatest athlete in the world,” to wit, Jim responded, “Thanks King.”
Pine Nuts: A Most Charming Bird
There’s more to a Steller’s Jay than we know. My pet Jay, Huckleberry, has demonstrated over the past two days, two distinct emotions I didn’t know he, or any bird had.
First a little background, Huck was born in the summer of 2017 on my lower deck. I could see from the top deck that he was getting ready to fledge, so I spread a sleeping bag on the driveway below to soften his landing. He hit it squarely and looked up to me as if to say thanks, while his sisters took it on the chin. We’ve been pals ever since.
Pine Nuts: Letter From Earth 2022
Michael, these Earthlings are having far too much fun! They skylark around making music, but not with harps, they fiddle. They enjoy the sports they enjoyed when I was here last, but they are more violent now. Little League umpires are walking off the field, refusing to take abuse from parents and Little Leaguers alike. While most individuals still do get along, political factions are mutating into warring tribes that dump vitriol by the bucketful on each other’s heads.
Pine Nuts: Taking on Mickey
Mickey Mouse was a relative of mine, or at least I thought he was. His cheerful presence warmed every room of our cozy home when I was a boy, probably because Uncle Bill was an artist for Walt Disney and worked on the early animated movies. If you Google-images, “Bill Layne artist,” you can see some of his early Disney work.
Well, Uncle Bill arranged for our family to visit Disneyland on opening day back in 1955 and I got to meet Mickey. At eleven years old I was the proud owner of a Brownie Camera and I took several pictures that day, only one of which survives today…