Profound observations of the absurdly obvious…

...or is it absurd observations for the profoundly obvious? From time to time a light bulb will go off in my head and a truism will hit me hard. I have been having these profound/absurd observations since my early 20’s and they go like this:

Inherited wealth. This means someone in your family bequeaths you money. This implies someone from your family has money. Usually old money. I will never come from inherited wealth.

The Olympics. Every four years (yes, I know the winter Olympics comes in the off years, but it just isn’t the same as the Summer Olympics…) I drag this one out. I will never be in the Olympics. Why this surprises me every four years I have no idea. It is not like I have ever been a competitive athlete, but nevertheless I am surprised. Curling. Perhaps curling is in my future.

Travelling. When I was 20 years old I attended Chiang Mai University and lived with a Thai Buddhist family. I had two weeks off from school and decided to fly to Nepal. My family thought I was insane. “Why would you go to Nepal, we have everything you need in Chiang Mai,” they said. It dawned on me, I was the adventurer. They had never been to Bangkok. By having me live with them, I was their adventure.

Uhuru. For our honeymoon Evan and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. It was the most unromantic honeymoon you can imagine filled with altitude sickness and shared smelly bunkrooms, but an adventure I wouldn’t trade. I was lying on a thin cot in Kibo Hut pretending to sleep in anticipation of getting up at midnight for the final assent in order to see the first rays of sun as they hit the continent. I was a little delirious but then it came to me. Uhuru is the Swahili word for Freedom. It is also the name of the tallest peak of Kilimanjaro. And then there is Lieutenant Uhuru, the black woman on the original Star Trek! Who incidentally was half of the first inter-racial kiss on television. The other half of course being Captain Kirk.

Cashmere and Kashmir. Beautiful cashmere scarves come from Kashmir India. Or do they?

If you tell people something, they will know it. If you don’t tell someone something, they won’t. And the lesson: You don’t have to tell everybody everything.

And today…Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert. The Mohave desert. There is no water in the Mohave Desert. Las Vegas is unsustainable and will eventually dry up and flake away.