Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2026 – Today I learned that I’m not the only one defending trees against the deer. Over lunch with an emissary of Bowdoin, I learned that she and her husband are also building tree cages and applying deer-repellant on trees to protect against deer damage. At the St. Croix Falls (WI) Menard’s store …
SEPTEMBER 29, 2026 – Late this morning I accidentally found myself watching live, Senator Cory Booker’s articulate diatribe condemning the Republican-staged persecution of former Special Counsel Jack Smith. The Republican theater was staged mainly for an audience of one, with the unrealistic hope that it will drive Fox audience turnout in November. Being the political …
SEPTEMBER 28, 2026 – This afternoon and early evening I had the privilege of spending more time with our fifth grader granddaughter. Her parents were working, and Grandma is still on your sojourn in the Maritimes, so I was responsible for after-school pick-up and dinner. Our conversation got off to an interesting start when Illiana …
SEPTEMBER 27, 2026 – After a mildly productive and rewarding day yesterday, I plopped myself down in a living room chair to watch the ABC Evening News. During certain episodes of my previous life, watching the network (and PBS) news was a daily routine; back in the day of Walter Cronkite, Eric Severeid, Chet Huntley, …
SEPTEMBER 26, 2026 – While Beth is with cousins touring the Maritime Provinces, I’ve been left to my own devices back here on the mother ship. My principal assignment is to keep the place ship-shape—no dirty dishes abandoned in the sink or on the counter; shoes off at points of ingress and egress; take-out Chinese …
SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 – (Cont.) For out-of-towners visitors, the skyways throughout downtown Minneapolis (and St. Paul, though St. Paul is a hollowed-out remnant of its more vibrant condition a generation or more ago) are an unusual and interesting feature. These second-floor walkways over downtown streets connect 150 buildings on nearly 80 blocks and are over …
SEPTEMBER 24, 2026 – (Cont.) This morning Jim and I left the Red Cabin and headed back to the Twin Cities for a whirlwind tour of a few highlights. Jim’s wife (not with us) had requested that he visit and photograph three sites: 1. The Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicollet Mall; 2. The Renee …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2026 – During one of the dinner gatherings at our 50th college class reunion back in May, my freshman year roommate reached out to greet me. I was overjoyed to see him. “Jim Molleur” hadn’t been on the attendee list that had circulated shortly before the three-day event, and thus, his presumed absence …
September 22, 2026 – Blogger’s note: On assignment in Buffalo.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 – Of all the goof-ball initiatives taken by the Current Regime, the biggest by any measure is the military action without an end in sight: the war against Iran. Back in April conventional wisdom on the part of Democrats was that if Trump didn’t end it before the mid-terms so that gas …
SEPTEMBER 20, 2026 – (Cont.) On a gloomy day marked by intermittent rain, I was down at Joslyns’ watching TV. Joslyns lived in a house so big, it seemed, you could wander at will for half an hour and never cross or retrace your path. They had four boys in contrast to my having three …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2026 – Books in our house grow like weeds. Most of this condition is attributable to my wife’s enterprise of selling used books online. To sell books, she must buy books, and books bought need to be housed. Add to this a lifetime of acquiring books for keeps. Start with college back in …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2026 – What now seems to be in ancient times (the 1990s), the self-help guru Richard Carlson was punching out a series of books with a target market of human gerbils striving to get ahead on the proverbial wheel. Most of us gerbils had discovered that no matter how fast we made the …
SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 – Yesterday I experienced two especially memorable conversations, one in the morning with a local friend and the other in the evening with a distant comrade. They were radically contrasting exchanges; one disturbing, the other calming. The two friends are years my senior. One was a sailor stationed aboard an American Navy …
SEPTEMBER 16, 2026 – Ever since the Charlatan in Chief introduced the falsehood of “voter fraud” after the unfavorable (to him) election results in 2020, the Republicans have carried forth on the red herring issue of “voter integrity.” The banner sound-byte of this campaign has been framed in an ostensibly unassailable rhetorical question, “How can …
SEPTEMBER 15, 2026 – After yesterday’s rant following a productive day on the legal front (was there a correlation?), I’m returning to the basics to recover my equilibrium. I don’t know if the condition that impels me to retreat to the infra-mundane, as it were, is a function of my age or simply the accelerating …
SEPTEMBER 14, 2026 – Remember when the war in Iran was all over the news? Until recently, I thought we were never going to hear the end of it . . . the war—er, military conflict or military operation or whatever else the Administration calls (a) large scale depletion of our munitions arsenal, (b) the …
SEPTEMBER 13, 2026 – If a toad diverted me temporarily (see yesterday’s post), I’m now back on track with my “pontification” about AI. I was kidding, of course, when I intimated that I possess any particular expertise on the subject. Yet, what’s revealed in various recent mainstream media articles and discussions (The Wall Street Journal; …
SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 – After reading several articles on AI and considering myself a complete expert, I was fully prepared to dash off a comprehensive pontificating post on the subject. You know—something extolling the oft-repeated far-flung benefits of AI, then turning a sharp corner and joining the fire drill over the hack of Hugging Face …
SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 – Years from now, scholars—perhaps in the form of AI, while the would-have-been-scholars, on GMI along with all other human beings, are sipping piña coladas on the beaches of southern Georgia (which, before a two-foot rise in seawater, was the Florida border)—will have provided the world with a definitive history of the …
SEPTEMBER 10, 2026 – I’m an optimist. And perhaps an unrealistic one: I keep hoping that by hanging out with real writers, I stand a better chance of becoming one myself. Okay, okay—in part I jest: My writing buddy, Erik Hansen, would be my friend even if he weren’t one of the finest writers I’ve …
SEPTEMBER 9, 2026 – Though music defines many people in our family, many are also defined by writing. Take my parents, for example. My mother, it seemed, was always writing up a storm, and during the eight years I was away at school, she dashed off several hundred letters. Each was a mix of advice, …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2026 – Today our 10- almost 11-year-old granddaughter attended her first day of fifth grade. Beth and I were eager to hear Illiana’s report but also anxious about it. What if she didn’t want to talk about it? Or worse, what if she did talk about it, but it was negative? Over our …
SEPTEMBER 7, 2026 – Today we rushed home from the cabin to attend the welcoming reception for this year’s crop of WPI Fellows—“WPI” being shorthand for “World Press Institute.” Founded over 60 years ago here in St. Paul, WPI produces an annual fellowship program for foreign journalists interested in learning about American news media and …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 – (Cont.) Among the top 10 maintenance challenges of a lake cabin owner, I must now include “preventing damage to young white pine from rutting deer.” For days now, I’ve been searching online for advice, insights, information on how to deter deer from rutting white pine saplings: what techniques work and which …