In The Cigar Box

Tranquility Base.   The Eagle has landed. July 20, 1969.   The end of a tumultuous decade was in sight.   One promise, made by a young, charismatic president on behalf of all Americans at the dawn of the decade, was fulfilled.   The light of future promise, dimmed by the spatter of blood flung from hate fueled division and assassination, was rekindled.   In the middle of that hot July night, two hundred million eyes and ears were as one waiting to hear that the Eagle’s pads rested safely on the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong’s simple words are the ones most quoted and remembered, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”   He always modestly recounted that it was the appropriate sentiment for the moment.   He understood that his individual achievement was but one step in a ten year, million mile journey.   He paid homage to the thousands of Apollo people who had to remain earthbound.   We’d been married...

Siri, are you there?   Yes, Tom, I'm here.   That voice, slightly reminiscent of HAL’s haunting dialect (from 2001, A Space Odyssey ), has the mystical, hollow timbre that we usually ascribe to an all-seeing, all-knowing, sometimes malevolent being.   Perhaps when Moses chatted with the burning bush, it sounded like Siri or, maybe, HAL.   Movies typically make God sound like James Earl Jones or Dennis Haysbert (the guy who does the Allstate commercials) but who knows?   On the new HBO series, The Newsroom , Maggie Jordan, a young, smart assistant producer, wants Michele Bachmann to tell the world what God sounded like when he (or she) told her to run for president – maybe God sounded to her like Siri, like James Earl Jones, or perhaps more like Cher or Sarah Palin? As I connected my iPhone to my computer so the software could be updated, I saw an announcement of the projected release of the iPhone 5.   Here I am, already intimidated in the presenc...

It took a long time for me to understand the sound of silence. For the last few years, there has been a ringing in my ears.   Tinnitus.   The audiologist has told me that my ears have stopped transmitting higher pitched sounds to my brain.   He really couldn’t add an explanation about why this occurs but it does – and the likelihood of developing tinnitus increases with age.   The most interesting thing he told me about tinnitus is that the ringing isn’t from any naturally produced sound.   What I think I hear as ringing is really my brain filling the void left by my ears' failure to transmit sound. It fills the gap with the memory of sound.   It is as though the part of the brain that interprets sound cannot rest, when there is no sound the conscious part of the brain thinks it hears what we’ve labeled ringing.   The brain could, I suppose, but doesn’t fill the void with the ringing of a beautiful gong like freedom’s bell or the soothing ton...

One hundred forty-one years ago (no, this is not when I was six nor when I smoked my first cigar) an ice jam broke at the confluence of the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers.  For the first half of April water rushed through farm fields and city streets, filled the tributaries and over-filled the Missouri River.  The river grew to widths of many miles through long stretches of its course.  The same river that three quarters of a century earlier had taken Lewis and Clark through the Louisiana Purchase, into the western territories and on to the Pacific swept away farms, fields, ranches and large parts of cities like Omaha. In March of 1881, James Garfield became the 20 th President and the riverfront town of Weston, Missouri was the second largest port on the Missouri River – larger than Kansas City or St. Joseph.  By the end of April, the Mighty Mo had cut herself a new channel and Weston was no longer a river port town.  By the end of September when the river...

I know why.   We debated about buying the tickets for two or three days.  On the day of the show, we agreed we’d ride up to Beaver Creek to see what tickets were left but generally thought they were too expensive.  After eating lunch at our favorite, genuine Mexican restaurant that serves great posole and white jalapeno sauce, a midday torpor set in that demanded an afternoon nap.  We would skip checking on tickets and head back to the condo. However, when we reached the Hiway 6 entrance to Beaver Creek, I didn't know why but turned and headed up the mountain past the lush golf course toward the village area.  We parked and took the elevator up and then rode an escalator down to the Vilar Center.  (Yes elevator up and escalator down.)  The small performing arts center that brings nearly two hundred nights of entertainment to the area each year is built under the Beaver Creek plaza.  The cost of the facility was largely donated by Alberto...