Luciano Is Being Seventy

Face Masks - Monday, May 4, 2020 My dear Facebook friend and relatives, every day I get up and get ready and take my dog, Louie-Louie,  for his early morning walk in my neighborhood. Once he has done his thing,  I come home and drop him off, and then I go for a longer and faster walk. I try to get in at least 10,000 steps every day. I don't always succeed but I try. During these walks in this age of this Coronavirus quarantine, I have noticed that many people do not wear face masks. I always wear a face mask to protect you from me. I owe you that much respect. I wonder why many people do not reciprocate or show a modicum of respect by wearing a mask when they encounter other people?  This pandemic is not close to being over! And so the big question that I have for you is, do you wear a face mask when you are out in public? Why or why not? Here is a selfie from this morning.

Shopping at Costco - AApril 13, 2020 Three weeks ago my daughter took me shopping at Costco. I stayed in the car while she shopped for what I needed. She didn't want me to go in because I am part of the age-related risk group. I don't think I have any pre-existing conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease that makes me more vulnerable to the virus. None that I know of. Knock on wood. I stayed in my car with my mask on in the parking lot of Costco, very close to the entrance. My daughter went in the store with her mask and latex gloves. As I observed the people coming into Costco I thought I was in the wild, wild west. The majority of the people, no matter what the age, didn't wear masks or gloves. There were huge groups of people and whole families walking into Costco, laughing and back-slapping each other. I thought that a party was about to break out. There appeared to be not a care in the world regarding the virus. I think that of the hundreds of people wa...

11.13.2019 - What do you do when your youth is long gone? As I approach my 55th high school class reunion and my 50th university class reunion, I was struck with "where in the hell has time and my youth gone" when I saw this cartoon. So you tell me, "What do you do when your youth is gone?" Thinking about my high school reunion got me to thinking about my classmates or classmates in general who don't attend the class reunion and why some other classmates have never missed one. What is it about attending a high school reunion that is either scary or attractive?  Some of my good friends in high school who were super athletes, most popular, handsome and pretty, very smart, got along with everyone,  class officers, have never attended our high school reunion. They seemed to have just disappeared from the face of the earth. Some of these students who never attend live right down the street from the reunion site.  They say that high school "is the be...

March 24, 2018 - Mass Demonstrations All Over the World in Support of the Parkland Students.  Unless you were sleeping under a rock somewhere, you are aware of the mass demonstrations on Saturday, 800 to be exact, more or less, all over the world in support of sensible gun laws and in support of the survivors of the Parkland shootings on February 14, where 17 students and teachers lost their lives. This is the cover of the Time magazine that hit the news stands today.   Will these demonstrations make a difference? Will it be different this time? Will it soften the hearts and mind of the politicians and the NRA? Will the NRA see sensible gun laws as a slippery slope to the eradication of the 2nd amendment? 73 more students have been shot to death since the Parkland massacre 37 days ago  according to a review of a database compiled by Gun Violence Archive , a not-for-profit organization that tracks shootings across the country. Can these young students keep this ...

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 A friend of mine who is writing a book of little league memories from the old timer of Douglas asked me to write my favorite memory from my little league days. As I wrote my memories I realized that those things that we do as kids, those things that happen to us when we are young impact us through out all our life. They influence who we are, and what we become. It is for this reason that I am including these memories of little league as a posting in my blog, "Luciano Is Being Seventy."  Little League Memories 1958 Luciano Ramirez I am writing my Little League memories at the request of Hector Leon from Douglas, Arizona. I really appreciate the humongous effort that Hector is undertaking  in making us, old little leaguers, dig into our memory banks and try to extract those memories that happened to us more than half a century ago. My memories are probably a little distorted and maybe a little embellished. What I am writing here is...

Wednesday, November 11, 2015 Veterans Day On this Veterans Day I am very proud to say that this was my cousin and childhood friend, Richard "Richie" Ramirez We were about the same age and we grew up together in the Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona, 20 miles north of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. We both attended Douglas High School graduating in 1964. The last time that I saw him was in June of 1968 when he shipped out of Travis Air Force Base in northern California to Viet Nam. I never saw him again.He was killed in Vietnam in August 1968.    We went to his funeral in late August of 1968. We didn't see the body. It was a closed casket.  The sadness that I saw in his mother, my tia Josefina,  on the day of the funeral is the sadness that I have seen in her everytime that I have seen after that. It is a sadness that has never gone away. The loss of a sun or daughter has got to be devasting to a parent. I get chills just thinking about this  a...