We’re all laughing in this photo in 1989 because I went to three high schools, stayed back and somehow pulled Brown University out of the hat. Well, the last high school was an elite all-boys Prep School. Classes six days a week. No girls. Any fun aspects of high school were discouraged if not formally prohibited especially for me given my track record. You are not going for four high schools, Mister Berkeley. A hat trick is enough. I lost my first name in the process. I was officially Mister Berkeley. And Mister Berkeley was ruled with an iron fist…

It’s sort of synonymous with agony. Park the car in overflow parking. Start trucking towards the mountain in your uncomfortable ski boots. Trailing three sets of equipment. Hoping your kid doesn’t crack right out of the gate. Feather in Ski the East. And now you are talking. -5 degrees with a real feel of -15. New Hampshire gets some of the biggest breezes in the lower forty eight in the winter. Pappy knows this personally because he’s an old time mountain man. I’ve actually greeted the New Year in a tent up on a peak in New Hampshire. Fire up…

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Sara and I make a pretty good model couple. We look great together as a model couple. That’s an actual category of couple. You do not screw with your model partner. You’re sitting there. It’s show time. And your model partner which is what she is. Is screaming into the phone at her boyfriend and/or girlfriend. Smoking a butt. Are we good? That’s what I used ask. She is doing her makeup. And she is pissed. The blow dryer is going. Big blondes was my medium. Or African American girls. Or French Nationals. Then she hangs up the phone…

I am so happy it’s Saturday. I’ve been dealing with really difficult problems lately that don’t entirely resolve. It’s not a complaint so much as a statement of fact. You can’t get there from here. That’s the easiest way to understand what I have been doing professionally for decades actually. I had a job in the nineties that went into the two thousands. The description of that one was I manage the unmanageable. I have a beast that cannot be controlled. My job is to control it. How am I doing with it? Well, not that bad. But it’s no…

They’re retiring the Mexican 20 peso note. Probably me too. I’ve been going to Mexico since 1988. I’ve been threatening to stop going to Mexico for about a decade now. What’s at the heart of the dispute is I want at Central America. Central America is my unicorn. It keeps getting away from me because of political unrest. I was actually reassigned to Mexico as a Public Health Worker in 1988 because the Marines invaded Honduras. Operation Golden Pheasant forever changed the direction of my life. And I can’t seem to get out from under that invasion. I was pretty…

That’s the official stretching out spot behind Lowes for The Great Esker Park 5k. Designed by yours truly. I don’t just Ocean Kai 5k. I Esker too. It’s actually better than The World’s End 5k, which I am doing as soon as I finish this article, because it’s a lot more wilderness. Great Esker Park is lightly traveled. No Trustee of the Reservation type people in their Trustee of the Reservation clothes. There is an actual fashion sense in World’s End which I would define as Fruit Center. The people that shop there. Trustee of the Reservation too. The Esker…

That’s Town Hall Cohasset, 1975. Wreck and ruin was our real estate back then. Vines growing out of the hinges of Town Hall. Although I remember the 1970’s down economy pretty fondly. It was a perfect compliment for how kids were back then. We not only made our own costumes. We made our own fun. We hand crafted that out of tin foil and cardboard boxes. We delightfully wheeled around our run down town on our bicycles in our Keds and patched dungarees. Frankly it was more fun. We didn’t like itchy wool Sunday trousers. We liked the woods. There…

That’s me in Mexico. During the last gasps of the 1980’s. It wasn’t all big hair and shoulder pads. Some of us were rural public health workers. My location was a brickyard outside of Leon, Mexico. It was a dump that burned trash to make bricks. The natural resources were trash, mud and a contaminated river. There was a lot to improve upon from a public health perspective. This photograph was taken on a Sunday. God’s day in Mexico. We didn’t work. We went to Church. I was pretty well out of the Catholic Church. Unconfirmed and lapsed but that…