Basket of Scenes from a Life

The following amounts to an electronic book. It consists of short articles that are published, in nearly every case, on Huffington Post. The articles describe remarkable experiences from my own life, mostly of people met or places visited.

The articles are arranged in chronological order and each title is clickable: you will be taken instantly to the text (preceded, in many cases, by a painting or photograph that fits with, or offers a comment on, the subject).

This “Basket of Scenes from a Life” stands beside my book, Enlarging Our Comfort Zones, which focuses more sharply on the 1980s. “A Basket” includes anecdotes from childhood to the present. This is less a memoir than a set of stories about other people, some famous and some just amazing. Enjoy.

Chronological periods:

• Growing Up (number of articles = 14)
• College (7)
• Year Abroad on Knox Fellowship (13)
• 1962-78 (21)
• 1978-1992 (13)
• The Nineties (11)
• Early Ashland (13)
• Later Ashland (13)

Total = 105

Images that appear at the head of articles listed on this page, whether works of art or photographs, are protected by copyright and are used by written permission of either the author of these articles (www.craigkcomstock.com) or Shoshanah Dubiner (www.cybermuse.com) who can each be reached via the websites listed above

Growing Up

“Marge’s Program” #151 (order of posting)

“Salutary Shocks” (surprises to learn from)#179

“A Penny on the Rail” (stopping a train) #155

“Back to the Farm” #216

“A Happy Man” #192

“Little Entrepreneurs” (a lesson from Dad) #132

“A Tipsy Playwright” (sneaking into the big city) #131

“A Rocket Just Like the Grown-Ups” #189

“Every Sunday” #219

“Mischief in a Boarding School” #218

“From a Still Pool to Flow”” (what I grew up with) #160

“The Freedom of Simple Living” #66

“What’s in a Name?” (my Dad’s) #180

“A Misdirected Endorsement” (letters from Senator Humphrey’s office) #130

College

“More Than I Expected” (volunteering) #202

“Writing for the Paper” #196

“When the System Fails” (adopting a false solution) #19 7

“The Hungarians” (starting with a room-mate) #206

“Monro’s Damage Control” (review of biography subtitled Uncommon Educator, about John U. Monro, who served as Dean of Harvard College) #54

“Encounters with JFK” (a Foreword by Jonh F. Kennedy, youth service abroad, a joke on the Presidential campaign trail about Nixon, the American University speech) #114

“Chosen Brothers” (college room-mates) #201

Year Abroad on Knox Fellowship

“Hands That Are Invisible” (remembering Adam Smith, in Edinburgh) #45

“Saved by a Strong Arm” (Lord Russell in London) #106

“Discovering In Parenthesis” (in Wales, about David Jones, the poet and artist) #98

“Amsterdam” #204

“Wall of Shame” (in Berlin) #100

“Unanticipated Lessons” (in Ischgl, Austria) #101

”Generosity on the Road” #141

“A Dinner in Delphi” (surprise in Greece) #107

“An Opening in Rome” #108

“She Would Have Fallen” (story told by Peggy Guggenheim, in Venice) #97

“Surprised by Joy” (in the Jeu de Paume) #161

“Always Having Paris” #170

“Not an Actor” (meeting Peter O’Toole) #146

1962-78

“Tragic But Not Serious” #

“A Glimpse of Politics” #221

“Alone in the Dark” (in a Roman ruin in Tunisia, in 1964-65) #118

“Nothing Happened” (a cistern) #173

“Riesman’s Crowd” (teaching “American Character & Social Structure)#187

“Dipping into the Law” (a year in New haven) #159

“Modernisms at Stanford” #233

“Le Monde in English” #209

“The Ranch as Refuge” (west of Palo Alto, CA, in 196 8-71) #123

“The Ranch as Teacher” #222

“Merits of Play” #205

“Second Thoughts” (first responder) #144

“As the Wheel Turns in Japan” (at the Katsura Imperial Villa, around 1971) #122

“Lesson from Starting a School” (helping to found a grad school at the Wright Institute in Berkeley) #117

Sanford’s Institutes #230

“Improvement of Teaching” #225

“Corn by thre Roaring Fork” (celebrity picnic)#167

“When a City Went Dark” (Manhattan blackouts) #154

“Neglected Art” (Whitney Counterweight) #200

“When a Cello’s Ready to Sing” (a love poem) #132

“Reframing a Task” #149

1978-92

(for this period, see also my book, Enlarging Our Comfort Zones)

“Yes But What Does It Mean?” (starting to paint) #128

“Book Creation Coach” #234

“Running with Deer” (on Point Reyes) #163

“Family of Origin” #195

“Roadside Attractions”#186

“Ashes in the Air” #182

“Prelude to a Challenge” #217

“When the Nuclear Arms Race Became a Thing” (a summit between Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland) #99

“A Nuclear Secret” (a conversation over coffee with a former Khrushchev aide) #09

“Adventures in the Soviet Capitol” #228

“Let’s Pretend” (a meeting of citizen diplomats) #220

“Living Through Little Disasters” (in the San Francisco Bay Area) #168

“Redefining Wealth” #224

Nineties

“Angie’s Way” (learning from Angeles Arrien) #129

“Big Island of Hawaii” #188

“Why You Were Shone to the Sun" (meditation on freckles in a poetry workshop with David Whyte) #127

“Grandmother Moon” (making her acquaintance) #135

“Raven in the Stern” (journey in a spirit canoe) #137

“Brothers in the Market of Rugs” (in Marrakech, Morocco, in the 1990s) #126

“Isaac Newton as Cowboy” (a visit to one of England’s great houses, in the 1990s) #113

“Meeting McKenna in His Jungle” #139

“If We Struck It Rich” (in Hawaii) #162

“Another Level of Being There” (visit to Ricky Leacock, a filmmaker in Paris, in the 1990s) #109

“Growing Up Under Authoritarian Rule” (an adolescence in war-time Amsterdam, lived by Robbert Van Santen in 1940-45, described by CKC in the 1990s) #116

Early Ashland (starting in 2000)

“The Making of a Teacher” (a review of Keith Martin-Smith’s biography of Zen Master JunPo Denis Kelly Roshi) #41

“Because You Can Be Taken Only by Surprise” (life on the path) #134

“Doing Nothing”

“Healthy Masculinity” (Bill Kauth and the Mankind Project, or MKP) #60

“An Incubator for Social Inventions” (participating in the Relentless Optimists) #119

“Abundance Gifting” (annual event founded by Jeff Golden) #52

“He Must Be in Love” (meeting my wife, Shoshanah Dubiner, in 2004) #120

“How Does Your Garden grow?” #214

“Women in Italy” #142

“Orchids and Laptops in Panama” (2005) #124

A Life Told in Paint” (review of the Charlotte Salomon exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco) #33

“Welcoming Warriors Home: The Film” (directed by Kim Shelton, produced by Bill McMillan, a documentary of a community ritual) #28

"Remembering a Buddhist Psychotherapy Pioneer" (Ron Kurtz, founder of Hakomi therapy) #22

Later Ashland

“Just Stopped Eating” (Mom’s dying) #156

“Progressive Condition” (living with a diagnosis) #148

“Mocha for the Brothers” (a coffee club) #175

“Playing at Any Old Age” (hosting a TV show called “Like Wow!”) #121

“People Doing Something Admirable” #208

“Gifts from Canada” #192

“Free Caribbean Cruise” (telephone solicitations) #147

“Importing That Shimmer” (the art of Shoshanah Dubiner) #172

“It Wasn’t the Troops Who Lacked Courage” (on documentary about the war in Vietnam) #176

“Nuclear Luck” #231

“Moments of Awe” #232

“Starting a Gratitude Practice” #178

“A Graceful Ending” (a death with dignity) #110

My adventures in the 1980s and very early 1990s are described at length in a book, Enlarging Our Comfort Zones: A Life of Unexpected Destinations (2016), including friendship with such mentors as Yosal Rogat (a professor at Stanford) and Don Carlson (founder of the Ark Foundation)

My personal website includes links to my recent books and all internet articles, excerpts from other writing, samples of paintings and photographs, biography, and so forth