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Al Martinez

There is a sweetness to the distance that intersects with time and necessity to call one to the open road. It comes from beyond the mountains and the far side of the widest rivers, just a whisper at first and then a summons that mimics the lure of the fictional island of World War II's Bali Hai…
If you are wondering why I am standing on a chair raising my fist and shouting "Right on!" it's because someone has finally come up with a formula for human longevity that makes sense. If you want to live longer, part of the formula goes, eat out alone at a different posh restaurant every night-and…
The shriek of a 3-year-old can crack glass, shift a house on its foundation and register on earthquake scales 100 miles away. If you doubt that, come on over while Gracie, my granddaughter, pierces the air with a sound that is somewhere between a siren and a scream that will leave you vibrating for…
There's a tendency among us grandpas to control, or at least direct, the lives of our grandchildren, theoretically filtering into their futures what we wish we had accomplished on our own.
Science is once more reminding us that there are predators stalking the land no larger than a speck of dust but with the killing power of a herd of hippos. They are so small you can't see them but you only have about a 50-50 chance of surviving their attack. They are called bacteria and the sepsis…
There is a place beyond imagination and beyond the rattle of the inner city, beyond the housing tracts of suburbia and even beyond the relatively distant semi-wilderness in areas around Los Angeles known informally as exurbia. We call that settlement of heavenly dreams Nowherebia.
I was telling my wife Cinelli about a Carole King album called Tapestry I had purchased online when I was stopped by the word "album." I couldn't say it. I said "alume" and "abul" and "alome," but not "album." It just wouldn't come out.
It's only been a few weeks since I joined the ranks of 1.6 million Americans who use wheelchairs, and it has already changed me. I feel helpless in some ways and useless in others. I am in a different world, downsized and looking up, dependent upon others to get me where I'm going.
Doris Roberts is the kind of dinner partner who can keep you laughing through the French onion soup, the Waldorf salad, the poached salmon and even the strawberry short cake, although afterwards you wonder what it was she said that made everything so funny.
It was quite a contrast.
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