Those of us of a certain age fondly recall the days of vacation or holiday “road trips.” In the days before the price of gasoline reached triple digits, i.e. when it cost less than a dollar a gallon, it wasn’t unheard of to drive for days on end to reach a particular destination.

Family road trips usually concluded at a relative’s house. Collegiate road trips often had no destination at all other than, uh, the open road.

Road trips came back to me as I read an open letter my great-great-grandfather had written back in 1901.

Have you been watching NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? Whuddya think? Good, bad, or indifferent, it seems to have stirred the public’s imagination. ———————————– It never fails. The minute I write something to the effect that I don’t have the time or temperament to keep blogging, along comes something that I just have [...]

C’mon now, have you really read all those obituaries and not given any thought to your own? How do you want people to remember you? Do you really want to leave your obituary in the hands of someone who might be guessing?

Why should writing your own obituary be any different than creating a will or granting power of attorney? You don’t even have to finish it because, let’s face it, most of us won’t see the grim reaper coming….

Spoiler alert! If you are now or ever were a believer in Santa Claus, this post may disrupt your space-time continuum to one degree or another. You’ve been warned.

Santa Claus is dead and buried in Saline County, Missouri. Or Rockingham County, North Carolina. Or Akron, Oho. It depends on which Santa Claus you’re looking for. There are quite literally hundreds of Santas listed in Ancestry.com’s databases.

Remember “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? It’s a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps. (Description lifted directly from WikiPedia.)

To be honest, the concept of the “Human Web” has been around a lot longer that that, but let’s digress no further. To get to the point, what do you think the chances are that you and I are connected to The POTUS (President of the United States)? I’ll tell you… 100%.