Siftings
Jul
10
George
George was his first name. I never knew his last. He worked days and I worked nights and weekends, so our lives didn’t overlap much. We were “Merchandise Handlers” at JCPenney’s. Unload trucks full of JCPenneyisms and fill up the loading dock. Be lord and sovereign of the freight elevator,...
Jul
08
Craig’s Friday Countdown All Star Improvements
12. Right fielder throwing contest.
11. Replace Chris Berman with Will Ferrell doing Harry Caray.
10. Eliminate all video reviews. Have whoever is sitting in Section 211, Row F, Seat 17 make the call.
9. Managerial swearing tournament.
8. Less Irving Berlin. More Woody...
Jul
06
Shasta, Briefly
If you’re going to be alone, a mountain is a rather good place for it. It’s incredibly beautiful, and generally unscarred by man. The scale is other worldy, and lends perspective to trials and tribulations well. There’s a saying in climbing that I’ll clean-up for this family language friendly...
Jul
05
Shasta
This will be interesting, I say aloud to no one at all as I step out of the Jeep. It’s three in the morning at a rest stop somewhere south of Redding, where a twenty-two hour day came to an auspiciously located end. The original plan was to drive all the way back to Seaside from Mount Shasta to...
Jul
01
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Bad to Worse
Packing for climbing is a never perfect balance of keeping weight down, while bringing enough stuff to deal with what happens. The dozen things I’ll be schlepping I least want to use:
12. Excedrin. Probably will, given seashore to 10,000 foot (or thereabouts) camp in less than one...
Jun
26
Routes
This won’t help at all. Outdoor World has an end cap with Wiffle Ball bats. I went in looking for some category 4 sunglasses. Otherwise known as glacier glasses, the dark tinted lenses and sideshields are necessary while at altitude, on snow. Three-day weekend coming up and snow-capped Mount...
Jun
17
Craig’s Friday Countdown Local Econ
How do you build a local economy to last? A dozen bad ideas, a dozen good ones, and two in the middle that locals are always certain of … because travel is too darn scary for some.
24. Hated, Bigotry, Violence
23. Deprivation, Inequity
22. Bad Math Skills
21. Animal...
Jun
10
Craig’s Friday Countdown KSG Kernels
There’s this school out east that has this program I scammed my way into 15 years ago this week (more here). I listened and / or took notes while there. 25 actual transcriptions from my notes below that may or may not be helpful [with 2016 notes that also may or may not be helpful].
25. Try...
Jun
08
Reverie in the Round
First in my class at Harvard. It’s a joke, of course, but it was also a little bit true. If you’re the first in your family to go to college, occupying a seat at Harvard’s Kennedy School seems like a fraud on the scale of securing a major political party’s nomination for President of these United...
Jun
03
Craig’s Friday Countdown - Teen(ish) Flicks
The countdown is a countup this week, with movies boys should watch on their way to becoming young men. Or, perhaps, they’re movies I watched somewhere along the way. Instead of rank order, presented in ascending age.
7 - 9 Star Wars (by “Star Wars”, I mean Han Solo is on screen)
10...
