Ripple Effect: Of Wind & Water

Every now and then I enjoy a late Monday afternoon walk around the block with Terri. We’ve been friends for 36 years and have shared the same neighborhood for 30 of those years. Our friendship has blessed us with many gifts, among them, that we both knew and shared time with our respective Moms before they no longer physically walked among us.

Terri’s mom, Joanie, had lived a few houses west of Terri and about a couple long blocks from us. Joanie’s place had been Terri’s childhood home. I enjoyed many a conversation with her mom over the years when I would stop by to “gift” her homemade bread on special occasions or daffodils in the Spring, ...

I conduct a bi-weekly “experiment”. The laboratories where I conduct my analysis are at random locations. My favorite site is a street intersection, where I gather data as I sit behind the steering wheel of my car while traffic is stopped. The best results are obtained when I am in front, right at the intersection, there I can clearly see the drivers opposite and to the right and left of me, each of us poised ready to move forward as the signal changes in our favor. I envision this as one gigantic petri dish, where we humans are the collective specimen prepared for “observation”. As we sit in anticipation of the light changing from red to green, a broad smile spr...

..The first time I heard the phrase “ripple effect” was in 1970 at a Richie Havens concert. Mr. Haven’s rendition centered upon a young man who woke late in a downtown hotel room; encounters numerous delays at check out and barely catches his flight due to traffic congestion. Frustrated, agitated and thoroughly frazzled, the young man finally enters his office after nearly 20 hours of travel. He angrily observes a pile of documents piled on his desk. Thumbing impatiently through the first document, he signs without ever comprehending its contents…sending 100s of troops into an ill-fated maneuver deep within the jungles of Viet Nam.