Merry Christmas.  But first, from the  Honolulu Star-Advertiser : A Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologist on Monday checks a webcam on the rim of Kilauea caldera. Kilauea began erupting again early Monday, with lava fountains up to nearly 300 feet. The eruption paused in the afternoon but lava resumed flowing onto the crater floor today . Every so often, the news of the day, or a film, or something just happens that reminds me of me.  Such is the case of a new series on Netflix,  A Man on the Inside .   Rotten Tomatoes,  95 reviewers and 92 audiences.   Read this article , which describes the production. Ted Danson plays an old, retired, engineering professor in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose wife has passed away.   Sort of like me. Of course you remember him.  Sam Malone on  Cheers , 275 episodes, where he won two Emmys and two Golden Globes.  And 53 episodes of  The Good Place , a comedy about a Heaven-esqu...

The first 18 years of my life was spent in Hawaii.  Just before starting college, I flew to stay with my brother in Oxnard to work for the summer at the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory in Port Hueneme, California.  Oxnard is 60 miles north of Los Angeles. In September of 1958 my brother drove me to the Stanford Campus, located about 35 miles south of San Francisco.  I recall crossing from the west side to the East Bay area on Friday nights to the Garden of Allah, to dance and see entertainers like Bobby Preston and Marty Robbins.  After I graduated in 1962, over the past 62 years, I've returned to San Francisco at least 50 times. Mind you, I don't really like SFO weather.  It's almost always too cold for me.  Something enchanting about the fog, which comes and goes.  But bicycling to class at 7:30AM in the winter was not comfortable.  Stanford is a bit warmer than SFO, but still much too cold in the winter.  In fact, I remember on  21...