by mike | Aug 16, 2018 | Aging, Baseball, Books, Death, Life, Science Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing |
This was a difficult post to write. It first appeared in 2014. My dad, Murray Sirota, passed away at age fifty-nine in 1969, when I was just a mere slip of a lad—more or less. We knew it would happen; a couple of months earlier he’d been diagnosed with inoperable lung...
by mike | Jul 12, 2018 | Aging, California, Life, Uncategorized |
Well, I’m probably still a head case, but not quite the same as I was back in 2014, when this post first ran. 😊 “Hi, I’m Mike, and I’m a head case.” Okay, I hope that didn’t prompt you to counter with the typical twelve-step response, because if it did, I gotta worry...
by mike | Jul 9, 2018 | Life, Museums, Non-Fiction, Uncategorized |
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” someone once declared. No, it wasn’t P.T. Barnum, the great showman, as many believe. But Barnum did have a role to play in the story of the Cardiff Giant—the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. THE PETRIFIED MAN In 1868 a...
by mike | Jun 11, 2018 | Books, Life, Thrillers, Uncategorized, Writing |
Recently, I discovered something about myself that, quite honestly, I did not like. It has to do with a fictional character: Dirk Pitt, the ubiquitous creation of bestselling author Clive Cussler. For those unfamiliar with Pitt, he is the central character in about...
by mike | Apr 30, 2018 | Aging, Films About Writers, Humor, Life, Movies, Uncategorized, Writing |
In this, the era of #MeToo, when women are making it clear that they’re fed up with the bullshit to which they’ve been subjected from men since the days of the “goodwife,” the 2016 comedy-drama, Year by the Sea, is most timely. Based on a memoir by author Joan...
by mike | Apr 16, 2018 | California, Life, Travel, Uncategorized |
I arrived in California to stay about forty-five years ago. Jacqueline, my bride, did the same over three decades past. Yet neither of us, during all that time, set foot in Yosemite National Park, one of this country’s most memorable landmarks, and for sure the gem of...
