Friday, September 23, 2011

SPECIAL PROMOTION IN HONOR OF THE JEWISH NEW YEAR

From now through the Jewish Holidays, buy a copy of The Accidental Anarchist from my website and get a coupon with instructions to download the ebook FREE. Give a signed copy of the book as a gift and keep the ebook for yourself, or keep both!


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I Don't Know How He Does It

I don't find enough time to finish all the things that I need to do, so how is it that my son, Jesse, can accomplish everything that needs to be done -- and then some? In addition to being a full-time student at NYU Tisch's @CliveDavisInst of Recorded Music (and he doesn't miss class), and a full-time musician (composer, performer, arranger, orchestrator, band manager and business manager for multiple bands; see http://www.jessekranzler.com/), he also found time to organize a fundraiser for UCSD's Che Cafe, a performance venue in San Diego that Jesse calls a "creativity inspiring space," where a lot of bands get their start. http://sandiegouniontribune.ca.newsmemory.com/publink.php?shareid=674c58e33.


Che Cafe is on the verge of being shut down unless it can raise $12,000 by March to pay its insurance premium, so Jesse has arranged for a 3-night music festival, with a different genre of music to be performed each night, to beheld January 6-8, 2011. To make a donation, go to checafebenefit at tumbler.com.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

A Modern Application of String Theory

My kids always accused me of circumlocution, of talking around a point before getting to the point, and I'm about to prove them correct again.

This weekend, I attended Tedx La Jolla, during which one speaker described the 'strings' of string theory as tiny particles that vibrate, and through those vibrations connect to each other. That led me into a conversation with someone about 'energy,' and how one can feel that energy in certain circumstances and know that it will affect the outcome. On a very plebian level, I can tell you that I felt it on the occasion of my son's last high school football game. When the team ran out onto the field, I didn't feel a confident energy, an energy that would have led them to win, and they didn't.

Not long after Tedx, I received an email about a Prayer Circle, or Healing Service to be held tonight for a friend, Jan, with glioblastoma (GBM), who will undergo her 2nd brain surgery tomorrow morning. This Healing Service called for women to come together to pray for our friend's health, safety and ultimate recovery with the goal of transmitting that energy, filled with positive thoughts and wishes, to Jan.

My intellectual energy was there, and my emotional energy was there, but I didn't have the spiritual energy that many other people in attendance had, but I hope that the prayers, hopes and wishes of over 100 women, some of whom don't even know Jan (including the woman I was talking to at Tedx about energy and string theory) will help her through tomorrow's surgery and her recovery over the weeks, months and hopefully years to come.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Kensington Library Talk

I had a great time speaking at the Kensington Library in San Diego this past weekend. It wasn't a large audience,  but a very well-read one (as you might expect) with a particular interest in history. They enjoyed hearing about my grandfather being an "eyewitness to history."

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Having One of Those Intensely Frustrating Days When Everything Goes Wrong

The last straw was a call for which I needed to look up my account number. No problem. Except that I had so many damn windows open on my computer that it was running ungodly slowly. And the more I tried to shut down programs to free up memory, the more it got locked up.

The kicker was that just as I got the website to open, Verizon dropped my call!

Times like these I know I should just call it a day and go for a walk, but now I'm further behind in everything I was trying to do.

My sympathies to everyone who has experienced the same.