Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JUNE 20, 2025 – (Cont.) Several days ago I wrote about my childhood experience of putting a note inside an empty ketchup bottle, tossing it into the Mississippi River by our home in Anoka, Minnesota and waiting to see if (a) the bottle would be retrieved anywhere along the flow of the river to the …
JUNE 19, 2025 – Today our crew—four adults, one kid, one toddler—headed for Connecticut’s best and biggest beach, the main but by no means only attraction at the sprawling Hamomasset State Park halfway between Old Saybrook and New Haven. In tow were four chairs, a beach mat, a beach umbrella (with stand), two hefty coolers …
JUNE 19, 2025 – My oldest sister once defined culture as “all the books you’ve read but can’t remember.” I might define civilization as “all the dinner and late-night conversations you have that you can remember the next morning.” By this definition, yesterday evening civilization was enriched and renewed as eight of us reveled in …
JUNE 16, 2025 – Today on I95 we crossed over the Connecticut River about two and a half miles north of where it empties into Long Island Sound, technically part of the Atlantic Ocean. As we hurtled along, I stole a glance at the broad river mouth and sealed the fleeting image in my memory …
JUNE 15, 2025 – (Cont.) I’m now in the small state of Connecticut, which is a big state for boats—many of them, big boats. The state next door, Rhode Island, is an even smaller state but with a moniker writ large: The Ocean State. The rest of New England is outwardly seafaring too, except . …
JUNE 14, 2025 – Blogger’s Note: Given events of the past 24 hours, today’s post interrupts the series Sailing the Ocean Blue. The series will continue in due course. With the rest of the nation I awoke this morning to the awful news that a gunman had murdered a prominent Minnesota state legislator and her …
JUNE 13, 2025 – (Cont.) On the occasion of Byron and Mylène’s wedding extravaganza at the Red Cabin in the year prior to Covid, I fixed up the Capri to entertain a host of guests from overseas who were staying with us before and after the Big Day. My favorite crew members were the Portuguese …
JUNE 12, 2025 – (Cont.) I never attended to the naming of the Bayliner—officially or unofficially. It was simply called the “power boat” to distinguish it from the Capri sailboat, as well as from the other watercraft in our growing fleet consisting of a paddleboat, two aluminum canoes and two kayaks[1]. The Bayliner served us …
JUNE 11, 2025 – (Cont.) With the family’s collective directive in hand (“rent a boat that we can use to water ski and tube behind and that’s comfortable to ride in”), I drove to M & M Rentals to make arrangements. They offered exactly what I figured would please the family—a 16-foot Bayliner runabout with …
JUNE 10, 2025 – (Cont.) On a weekend trip to the cabin the next spring, we spotted a boat for sale in front of a familiar battered country house on Highway 70 just east of Spooner 30 miles from Grindstone. It was a Ouchita (an alternate spelling of “Witchita”) rowboat with an eight-horse Mariner motor, …
JUNE 9, 2025 – (Cont.) Just after nightfall the hot, humid weather had transformed into the perfect storm. After putting the kids to bed, Beth and I sat down on the front porch to watch the meteorological sound and light show. A few minutes of crash–BANG was followed by gusts that stirred up the water …
JUNE 8, 2025 – (Cont.) A year after the Love Boat voyage, Beth and I were married—in the exact spot where we’d met . . . overlooking the great inland sea that is Grindstone Lake. In October 1989, our second son arrived, and soon thereafter, we bought the very cabin where I’d drifted toward after …
JUNE 7, 2025 – (Cont.) The next spring brought good fortune on the waterfront. Fred Moore, our friend and neighbor across the street, the inveterate entrepreneur who’d recently sold his successful business, had now become a distributor of “water bikes.” A couple of models were chained to an elm tree in the Moore’s front yard. …
JUNE 6, 2025 – (Cont.) For the next two summers, my time at the cabin was equally divided among four pursuits: practicing my violin, writing letters, reading articles in old Coronet magazines from the 1930s and 40s stored in various nooks and crannies around the cabin, and, of course . . . sailing the ocean …
JUNE 5, 2025 – (Cont.) At the cabin, Dad used the cabin mower in the same fashion he’d deployed the home mower: as a jerry-rigged dolly. Together we maneuvered the Fleetwind hull from the trailer to the west side of the cabin. He then attached an extended painter to the bow, and while he controlled …
JUNE 4, 2025 – (Cont.) Late in the afternoon, the big Sears delivery van pulled up to our house. Its two occupants hopped out, one holding some papers. I happened to be standing in the driveway, so I was able to vouch for the precious cargo in the hold of their ship . . . …
JUNE 3, 2025 – (Cont.) Beginning my sophomore year of high school, I transferred from Sterling School in the Green Mountain State to Interlochen Arts Academy, located in the wilds just south of Traverse City, Michigan. The campus lay between Duck Lake and Green Lake, each a sizable body of water conducive to small craft …
JUNE 2, 2025 – One aspect of aging I’ve observed is the increase in vicarious living. Back at the other end of my personal time scale, whatever was vicarious in reality remained theoretically possible within my imagination. Olympic gold, for example; becoming president of the United States, for another; or . . . sailing the …
JUNE 1, 2025 – This evening our son and granddaughter joined us for dinner, while “Mom” was working. Well into the proceedings when Illiana slipped away to fetch something, Beth summoned her back and issued a mild reprimand. “At school do you just get up and wander around the lunchroom when you’re finished but before …
MAY 31, 2025 – As I first reported several weeks ago, part of my follow-through from the spring semester course in Russian history I took at the University of Minnesota, has been my study of the Stalinist Purges of the 1930s. The textbook for this study has been The Great Terror, Robert Conquest’s aptly entitled …
MAY 30, 2025 – Anyone who’s been around a three-to-four-year-old is familiar with the “Why?” phase. It’s when any statement or directive by a grown-up to the child triggers a “Why?” in response. At the start of the phase, the uninitiated attempts to answer, which prompts another “Why?” followed by another answer. Soon the parent …
MAY 29, 2025 – Today I tuned into a replay of a Westminster Town Hall Forum[1] on the imperial presidency. The segment featured Jack Goldsmith, who teaches at Harvard Law School. Before his academic career he’d served in the Office of Legal Counsel and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense during the Bush W. …
MAY 28, 2025 – (Cont.) ME ONE: Moving on from the basics—clean air and water, decent nutrition and affordable housing . . . I’d say what are most important for our well-being are universally affordable, accessible and effective public health and public education systems. ME TOO: I couldn’t agree with you more. Public health should …
MAY 27, 2025 – Today I engaged in my usual routine when at the Red Cabin—I took a long hike up and down the trails of the Björnholm “tree garden,” trimming encroaching vegetation as I proceeded, and checking the latest growth displayed by the hundreds, nay thousands, of young pine. With the pittance of snow …
MAY 26, 2025 – Visiting us for several days at the Red Cabin are two of my wife’s cousins—Brian and Eric. Brian I keep calling “Byron” by mistake, and half the time when someone shouts, “Hey, Eric!” I think I’m being hailed, but as it turns out, I seem to be wrong 100% of the …