I do not know how important football was to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and all the other computer pioneers in 1967. But today’s Super Bowl fan can’t help but appreciate the communication abilities we take for granted 45 years later and the footprint they helped create.Vince Lombardi, the man who the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl’s trophy is named after, winning coach of the first and second events, probably would have been astonished by the effect this game — of just determining which American football team was the best — would impact the globe today. He probably would find it hard to believe how important this game has become to so many people, football fans or not.

If you were sitting alone for an hour, without distractions, and asked to remember your childhood, this is the kind of book you would probably come up with, evoking moments—some painful, some humorous, some tender, others transcendent—that together are like pictures at an exhibition titled “Your Life,” which, like the Smithsonian’s, is too vast to experience on any one visit.

Our town has a “leash law” prohibiting dogs from running loose and requiring owners to have dogs under their control. While walking around the path at a popular local park, I often encounter people with dogs 6-15 feet away on leashes loosely dragging behind the dog instead of held by the owners. . .

In the early 1900s, the only way to move automobiles across the major rivers was by ferry. History tells us there were many such ferries in the 1800s that transported horse-drawn wagons and, later, automobiles. One of the most amazing ferries carried an entire train from Goble, Oregon, across the Columbia to Kalama, Washington; the train ferry operated from 1883 until 1908, when a railroad bridge was built across the Columbia from Portland to Vancouver.

I discovered zydeco 10 years ago during my annual pilgrimage to the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival. The 4th of July weekend festival hosts ‘Swamp Romp’, a showcase of zydeco and Cajun bands featuring a dance floor and shade. I jumped around in my seat for several years before I got the nerve to try it out on the dance floor.

The legend called us kings, but we were really just rich. We had enough wealth to enjoy leisure, to study, to learn of other lands and to pay careful attention to the natural world. The legend called us magi – wise ones. Well, that might apply to Balthazar and Melchior, but me — I’m just, shall we say, curious.

Set in a Democratic presidential primary in Ohio, the plot is direct, and the tempo is as taut as an over-tightened “E” string. Clooney plays the candidate, but Ryan Gosling is the star of this film, the 30-year-old media guru to the candidate’s experienced campaign manager, Philip Seymour Hoffman. These two formidable actors are playing against the other candidate’s campaign manager, the talented Paul Giamatti, and, at times, against each other.