Michael Lipsey's Blog
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Sep.26.2010
Debate continues as to the cause of the extinction of the human species. Humans were top predators for several million years. They seem to have been a single species. They were to be found on almost every part of the planet they called Earth, the majority living in huge colonies. Like the dinosaurs...
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Sep.17.2010
Why am I a writer and an artist? My wife says that I’m a much better writer than artist, and she is probably right. But writing can be lonely and depressing. What is not published barely exists in the world. But I’m always happy in my studio, even when I do nothing more than putter and sweep the...
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May.07.2010
Lipsey’s Law of True Explanations: The true explanation of why you messed up can always be stated in six words or less. Some examples of true explanations: I overslept. I drank too much. I didn’t read the instructions. I didn’t know they checked. I thought you wouldn’t notice. I forgot to turn it...
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Apr.20.2010
Thinking about how much time I waste online, I suddenly realized that it’s been 20 years! Two decades ago I was sitting at the kitchen table in Sausalito with my Mac SE 20 “Portable” (weight about 20 pounds, but I took it everywhere) and the fat UNIX manual of commands you needed to navigate The...
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Mar.31.2010
Back in the 60’s before I had a clue about what I was going to do with my life, I was, of all weird things, a Democratic precinct captain in Chicago. My precinct was just a few blocks from Obama’s present homestead (some dirty Syrian money lent a hand in the purchase). Obama wouldn’t have had a...
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Mar.09.2010
Here in San Rafael, our SallyAnn store (Salvation Army, as it is known to those of very modest means) is conveniently located next to our Whole Paycheck (Whole Foods, as many call it). But I doubt there are many who, like me, shop at both stores. I get my sweatshirts at the SallyAnn and my salmon...
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Nov.16.2009
Looking for an unusual business opportunity? I've posted another chapter from my work-in-progress, "Kitchen Sink Confidential." 4,000 years of plumbing, from the qanats to you anxiously awaiting the arrival of your plumber as water drips through the ceiling. I pull back a few curtains,...
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Nov.02.2009
I've posted yet another chapter from my book on the history of plumbing, and everything else, at http://ithoughtso.net/id15.htmll
This is a work in progress and comments or questions are welcome.
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Oct.24.2009
Words fail me. Words cannot express... I can’t tell you how... I wish I could say... I don’t know how to say this... I can’t say. Who can say? What can you say? Be careful what you say. There are no words for...Mere words, empty words, loose talk, psychobabble, happy talk, gibberish, false words,...
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Oct.16.2009
In college, imagining that I loved all great literature and could never get enough of it, I signed up for a course on Henry James. Henry proved to me that I could. We slogged through book after book after book. He wrote about fifty of them and we must have read at least a dozen. He was the brother...
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Oct.11.2009
In high school, with a brain battered by hormones, I labored through Silas Marner by George Eliot. It’s a small book, but at the time it seemed like a thousand pages of slogging through a swamp of words, every paragraph sucking at your feet. I found the book bleak and depressing, even though it is...
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Oct.06.2009
It seems that successful (and otherwise sensible) writers often succumb to a terrible urge to write a book about how to write a book. If I were to become a famous writer (which is not unlikely in some parallel universe) I would break new ground by writing a book about how to write a book about...
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Sep.22.2009
I’ve always been fascinated by the brand names on machines and other products. Our bathroom scale is a Health o meter (sic). The scale in my health club is a Detecto. The centrifuge for drying swimsuits is a Suitmate. The card-operated lock on the locker is a Safe-O-Mat. The combination locks on...
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Sep.12.2009
I've put a chapter from my book on the plumbing industry, and life, death, love, philosophy, religion and the fate of the universe, on my website
http://ithoughtso.net/id13.html
The working title is Kitchen Sink Confidential. Comments and criticism are always appreciated.
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Sep.09.2009
This week's blog topic is repentance, a subject on which I have lived long enough to be able to write at length. I will kindly not burden you with my regrets but simply offer two of my epigrams:
If you don’t think that you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your life, you’ve learned nothing.
I’m planning...
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About Michael
Michael Lipsey grew up in Chicago, a city that does not like to waste words, and after forty years in California, the Chicago still shows in his writing. He read the Great Books at Shimer College and remains an active observer of intellectual, religious and...
Causes Michael Lipsey Supports
Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Nature Conservancy