Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 23, 2024 – For book club this month—the month of Halloween—our group is reading Frankenstein by Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley. You all know the story[1]—man creates uncontrollable monster. Last summer the sequel was published under the title, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, by one Ramin …
OCTOBER 22, 2024 – Yesterday evening I experienced local government at ground level. My overall reaction to the encounter was, “Where was Norman Rockwell?” The place was the Bass Lake Township Town Hall between Grindstone Lake and Lac Courte Oreilles in western Sawyer County, Wisconsin. As far as anyone knows, there is no “Bass Lake” …
OCTOBER 21, 2024 – This morning in these parts, the sun peeked above the distant eastern shore of the lake at precisely 7:32. A good 20 minutes before, I’d slipped the kayak into the water and paddled quietly, effortlessly along our shoreline. I still felt like a free-floating spirit in a dream, gliding magically past …
OCTOBER 20, 2024 – As Archimedes (circa 287 B.C.E. – circa 212 B.C.E.) famously said, “Give me a place to stand, and with a lever I will move the world.” Today I thought a lot about the Greek-Syracusan polymath, as I worked a lever repeatedly to move my sailboat lift from the lake up onto …
OCTOBER 19, 2024 – Yesterday I celebrated the complete take-out of lake cabin Dock No. 1. Today I failed in my attempt to de-install Dock No. 2. But it was not a total loss. First, I didn’t break any limbs—or worse—nor did I lose or damage any tools, accessories or the dock itself. Second, I …
OCTOBER 18, 2024 – Last spring in a three-part series—Zen and the Art of Dock Installation (See 5/12 through 5/14)—I described my engineering project up at the lake. Today I reverse-engineered it. That is, I took out the dock and staircase that I had so carefully installed last May. I’m 70, mind you, which means …
OCTOBER 17, 2024 – “Garden of Eden” is how I think of the 20-acre (or so) tree garden within the larger woods of Björnholm along the northwest shore of Grindstone Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. Perhaps I get carried away by the peak foliage and gorgeous weather that has prevailed since I arrived here Tuesday afternoon. …
OCTOBER 16, 2024 – This morning I completed the second of two remote, hours-long sessions with a researcher at the University of Minnesota. Our family had been recruited some 25 years ago to participate in the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (“SIBS”) of adoptive and non-adoptive families undertaken by the Minnesota Center for Twin and …
OCTOBER 15, 2024 – “Dear Diary, In many ways today brought a typical mixture of ebb and flow; tension and resolution; yin and yan. What was different about it all was my awareness, my perception of opposing forces coming together to provide a modicum of peace through balance. I started off in conflict—talking litigation strategy …
OCTOBER 14, 2024 – Each of us might well say that by a certain age, we’re “concerned about the current direction of the country.” The more you see and experience of this land of ours—the third most populous in the world—the more chronic dysfunctionality you’ll notice. Because of this, we’re naturally likely to conclude that …
OCTOBER 13, 2024 – Every good war movie—or just to be clear, “every war movie that’s a good movie”—winds up being an anti-war movie. Even a good movie about the “Good War” (WW II) is a reminder of the insanity and futility of war. By that I don’t mean that war is nugatory for the …
OCTOBER 12, 2024 – Today our granddaughter celebrated her ninth birthday. At our son’s request my wife and I “got scarce” for nearly the entire duration of the shindig, which was staged at our house. At first we were a bit miffed at being excluded, but as I observed the birthday girl’s mother and dad …
OCTOBER 11, 2024 – Okay, okay. By this stage of the game anyone who’s not residing (“surviving”?) in a cave off the grid is liberally familiar with the “style” of the Republican candidate for president and that he’s all about two things: 1. Himself; and 2. Pyrite. As far as I can discern, his prospective …
OCTOBER 10, 2024 – If I’m anything like the next person, there’s reason to worry about the next person. All my life I’ve continually tried to step outside myself, my quirks and confines, thoughts and ideas, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, mostly to turn back and see how I come across to myself. This is a challenging …
OCTOBER 9, 2024 – “’Tis a wonder why ‘B’ is the biggest surname initial among composers in the pantheon of Western classical music . . . as in Bach, Buxtehude, Beethoven, (Mendelssohn)-Bartholdy, Berlioz, Bruch, Brahms, Beach, Borodin, Bartok, Barber, Bernstein and . . . [brass heralds . . .] Bruckner. I mentioned Bruckner in my …
OCTOER 8, 2024 – Among the books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves in the den of our house when I was growing up was the No. 1 best seller in 1958, Only in America by Harry Golden. I never read it, but I’m sure my parents had: they read pretty much every book that wound up …
OCTOBER 7, 2024 – Today, of course, marks the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israelis, a beastly assault and hostage-taking operation that triggered the vengeful destruction of lives and property in Gaza in the latest cycle of violence between Israel and its enemies. Forever, it seems the best that American policy-makers can do is …
OCTOBER 6, 2024 – Maybe it’s an “age thing” or perhaps its my surroundings or both; in any case, today I found myself in orbit around my own little world, as it were, and the view triggered myriad emotional and cognitive responses in a combination I had not experienced before. Physically speaking, I was well …
OCTOBER 5, 2024 – We awoke this morning to a wild and wooly day—in the wind department, anyway. The sun was emerging through light, unorganized cotton candy clouds, and the outdoor thermometer registered a balmy 56F, but the wind? It howled like an over-eager parent at a high school soccer match—not with mean-spirited shouting but …
OCTOBER 4, 2024 – Lord knows there’s lots to think and talk about these days: campaign shenanigans; suffering—and conspiracy theories (will they never end?) associated with disaster recovery in the wake of Helene; mass war criminality in Sudan; Antarctica turning green from global warming; the staggering blow to the economy if we were to round …
OCTOBER 3, 2024 – I’m unequivocally in the camp that puzzles over how and why the upcoming election is likely to be so close between Dems and Reps—for House and Senate, as well as the White House, but especially the White House. How is it that The Worst Rock Band Ever could be in a dead …
OCTOBER 2, 2024 – While pundits left and right debate who “won” the “debate,” my figurative gavel comes down in favor of “Marcus,” the self-confident Oakland University undergraduate among the MSNBC focus group of his peers from the Rochester, Michigan school. When asked about J. D. Vance’s criticism of Harris’s “policy” as VP, Marcus said, …
OCTOBER 1, 2024 – Today in the Heartland fall was in the air, though the sun was bright in a cloudless sky. After reviewing convoluted legal descriptions all morning, I burst out of work mode and embarked on my daily power walk up and down the hills of Little Switzerland. On my second climb to …
SEPTEMBER 30, 2024 – Without being on the ground . . . er, in the water . . . a person can’t fully grasp the devastation that visited parts of the American Southeast late last week. Faster than you can say “flash flood” 10 times, we who weren’t affected directly will be on to other …
SEPTEMBER 29, 2024 – Friday our good friend Sally texted to see if we’d like to join her and Camila and Claudio, an interesting and engaging couple from South African ex-pats now living in Portugal but visiting Minnesota in connection with the current World Press Institute fellowship program. Camila is a WPI alumna, fellow board …