Craig's Corner

  In nearly 25 years of Los Angeles living, I never missed the “seasons.”   They exist in California – just on a more nuanced scale.   You have pilot season, upfronts, festivals and of course the most exciting season of all:   awards! As last week’s solstice marked the start of summer now that I’m on the East coast I find it remarkable that people’s way of life actually adapts to this variance on the calendar.   Churches, offices and even retail businesses have “summer” hours.   Traffic flows towards water-based communities with regularity – and even the local transit authority has a seasonal train down to “The Cape.”   It feels quaint somehow, almost as if I’m on the back lot of a summer blockbuster.   People take it quite seriously though…and it’s not unique to the Boston area.   There was a similar surge of outdoor activities during my summer in Minnesota last year.   ( There Mother Nature has it out for you year round so people will do anything during the handful of da

Monsters University opens tomorrow – the long awaited Pixar sequel to its hit Monsters, Inc.   Can’t wait to see it!   I spend a huge amount of my non-working time consuming television or movie entertainment.   The vast majority of that time is following a who-dunnit or a procedural or some good versus bad variation.   I don’t go much for the AMC shows where watching is not all that different from watching paint dry.   Even the soapy shows that are a guilty pleasure have people whom the viewer roots for and those who you don’t.   American foreign and domestic policy is based on the exact same principal.   Good versus evil goes back to the dawn of time, and has been part of story-telling as long as there have been stories.   In political terms any major event in American (or world) history will find the same narrative.   The trick is that one person’s Freedom Fighter is another person’s Rebel and traitor.   In the 1930’s Hitler was the bad guy.   Then it was the communists.

June 14, 1777 the Second Continental Congress adopted the flag of the United States.   This week marks “Flag Week” and President Obama, like those before him, has issue a proclamation .   It says, in part, “Wherever our American journey has taken us, whether on that unending path to the mountaintop or high above into the reaches of space, Old Glory has followed, reminding us of the rights and responsibilities we share as citizens.”   The President is eloquent as ever – it’s connecting the rhetoric with his actions where there’s an issue.   Given the news out of the capital the past several weeks, I’m ready to wave the white flag. For years we’ve known that the Government was collecting huge swaths of data.   I’ve written many blogs about the various invasions, the enormous cost, the lack of accountability and the absurd thesis of “giving up freedoms to save freedom.”    The misnamed “Patriot” Act permits the gathering of this information … then some.   The fact Congress pa

I’m homeless.   I have a roof over my head and a place to stay, but for the first time in over a dozen years I don’t actually own a piece of real estate.   ( At one time I had an ownership stake in four properties at once.)   For the past 18 months in two different cities I’ve been staying in temporary digs and for various reasons have divested my holdings.   There is much to miss about being a homeowner and a landlord – but there is much that I am glad not to deal with.   Leaking faucets,   stopped up sewer lines and unstable and unruly tenants top the list of things I don’t miss.   A few months into owning my first triplex the tenant came to me and said “there’s water on the kitchen floor.”   After determining that nobody had spilled anything and nothing above ground was the root cause, I found that a pipe under the kitchen had a leak and was spraying water up through the floorboards.   If the water had been spraying down it would have taken days or weeks of the water se