Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
NOVEMBER 24, 2021 – I admit that writing a book review after reading a single chapter is as premature as reviewing a five-course meal after the appetizer. However, sometimes the writing—or dining—is so extraordinary, the reviewer feels equipped to express early admiration. The book, in this case, is Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. Several years …
NOVEMBER 23, 2021 – Yesterday my wife and I were among the millions of Thanksgiving week air-travelers. From MSP to BDL, we experienced no bumps, not even over the Great Lakes. After a smooth flight, the three-point landing couldn’t have been executed more cleanly. “Nice landing,” I said to the captain as we exited the …
NOVEMBER 22, 2021 – This was the day that we who are old enough to remember . . . remember. By November 22, 1963, however, people had largely forgotten a key issue of the 1960 campaign: Kennedy’s Catholicism. His speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, however, buried the fear that if elected president, he’d …
NOVEMBER 21, 2021 – I’ve mentioned him before—our neighbor, “K.O.,” exactly my age, a retired high school honors English teacher, a Twins scout, and a former Republican. Yesterday he joined me on my walk to “Little Switzerland,” where we hiked hills for the equivalent of 41 flights of stairs. Every encounter with K.O. is filled …
NOVEMBER 20, 2021 – Posting a zinger-critique of America’s baggage seems no more useful than a fugitive analyzing tire pressure of an escape vehicle. Yet, ostrich antics won’t work either. Reality persists, watched or not. What do we do? What our species has always done: bequeath to youth. They will inherit the earth. They will …
NOVEMBER 19, 2021 – Simon Winchester wrote a book entitled, The Perfectionists, an interesting work about precision engineering. In the world of machines and micro-machines, precision to the nth-degree marks the difference between function and failure. Perfection applies with equal force to many fields, from music to medicine. It even rules in the practice of …
NOVEMBER 18, 2021 – A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I published a novel, Severance Package, which I described oxymoronically as, “a satirical business thriller.” I gave it passing reference in a post several days ago. The book was the most serious case of vanity I’d ever attempted and manipulated to …
NOVEMBER 17, 2021 – I’d wanted to write something cool (but heartwarming), when Bam!—I read about the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois kid who grabbed his assault rifle and ammo and drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin to kill a couple of BLM protesters . . . in self-defense. After closing arguments in a courtroom presided …
NOVEMBER 16, 2021 – Doubtless, FoxHound infotainers are excoriating “socialist Democrats” and turncoat Republicans for having passed Biden’s “un-American,” “inflationary” infrastructure legislation “costing the taxpayer” over a trillion bucks. I see it differently. FIRST, it’s not $1.2 trillion. It’s only $550 million of additional money. That’s less than the $678 billion Americans spent on media …
NOVEMBER 15, 2021 – Yesterday, on my own initiative, I watched several quarters of televised NFL games, half-time talk by commentators, and post-game chatter by Aaron Rodgers. For me this was a first—I’d never turned on the TV and searched for a football game. My new, strange (for me) diversion is an effort to share …
NOVEMBER 14, 2021 – Snow fell overnight and stuck. It was a warm-up (“cool-down”?) for what lies ahead. I used to feel excited and frustrated with the first snow—excited by the approaching ski season; frustrated that the first dusting of snow wouldn’t be skiable. In my (halcyon) dinosaur days, winter couldn’t last long enough. With …
NOVEMBER 13, 2021 – In despair yesterday evening, I read disturbing articles about the three big issues of our times: climate change, the pandemic, and crass threats of violence in rightwing American political rhetoric. And yes, I pled “guilty as charged” for having broken isolation from “breaking news.” (The relapse was temporary, I assure you.) …
NOVEMBER 12, 2021 – Star Media, the Russian TV/film production company, delivers again. Yesterday, I finished watching its 12-episode-series, Sorge: Master Spy—a superb work, even if you’re not interested in WW II. That conflagration unfolds only as backdrop; the entire setting is Tokyo (before being fire-bombed by American aircraft) with intermittent trips to Stalin’s Kremlin …
NOVEMBER 11, 2021 – Over the past week our neighborhood has been out in force raking leaves before moderate weather goes . . . south. All the rakers have transformed our local world into a live-action Norman Rockwell gallery. In addition to the rakes, however, are godforsaken leaf blowers, prompting me to mutter on several …
NOVEMBER 10, 2021 – Yesterday I sent a mail-in ballot for three seats on a corporate board. In my pre-evolution years I threw such ballots in the trash (the times having pre-dated recycling as well as evolution). Now “evolved,” I voted against myself . . . Four candidates are running for three seats. The incumbents …
NOVEMBER 9, 2021 – As squirrels prepare for winter, fall is when they act most . . . squirrelly. Late the other day, however, while strolling down our alley, I caught a squirrel napping conspicuously on a tree limb barely 10 feet off the ground. Perhaps, I thought, the squirrel was resting after a hard …
NOVEMBER 8, 2021 – Over the weekend, I stapled bud caps onto another 400 white pine seedlings and saplings in the “tree garden” up at the lake. It’s been an annual project since I manually planted a few hundred seedlings in woodland acreage that’d been harvested seven years ago. The work is necessary to protect …
NOVEMBER 7, 2021 – When I was circumnavigating the globe, there weren’t such things as smartphones or the public internet. For travel information I relied on a collection of guidebooks published by Lonely Planet. That name seemed inapt, for though I traveled alone, I never felt lonely—because I traveled alone and was therefore more likely …
NOVEMBER 6, 2021 – I don’t want to divulge to anyone—me, in particular—even an approximation of how long I’d gone without practicing before yesterday evening. The long passage of silence shattered what the famous Polish pianist (and president), Ignace Paderewski (1860 – 1941) said about practicing: “If I miss one day’s practice, I notice it. …
NOVEMBER 5, 2021 – Nine hundred days was the duration of the German siege of Leningrad during World War II. More precisely, it was 872 days—September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944—but after such mass-scale, civilian suffering, Leningraders (now St. Petersburgers) and historians rounded up—as did American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Harrison Salisbury, whose 635-page, …
NOVEMBER 4, 2021 – I’ve not been a big fan of big sports, though as a kid I was a major fan of major league baseball. In 1965, on my transistor radio I listened to nearly every Twins game and bought baseball cards every other day. By season’s end I knew as much about baseball …
NOVEMBER 3, 2021 – According to public information and insider observations, the heart of the Twin Cities metro area is a major crime zone. It’s not yet as bad as Minneapolis was 26 years ago, when with 97 shooting deaths, the city was known as “Murderapolis,” but the year isn’t over. Moreover, in Minneapolis this …
NOVEMBER 2, 2021 – One of the joys of having our six-year-old granddaughter visit is teaching her to pronounce, “Paganini.” This was in answer to her question, “What’s the music in the cat video?” The “cat video” is Fantasia dei Gatti (“Fantasia of the Cats”), a cartoon produced by Augustin Hadelich, the Italian-born/reared son of …
NOVEMBER 1, 2021 – Yesterday’s Times included the review of a “big picture” book, just released, written by British anthropologist David Wengrow and the late American anthropologist (and “anarchy activist”) David Graeber. By “big picture” I don’t mean large illustration. I mean a book that makes you question what billions of us have taken for …
OCTOBER 31, 2021 – I grew up in the “Halloween Capital of the World” (Anoka, MN). My wife, who didn’t grow up with world domination (Byron, IL), is skeptical. “A place doesn’t become a world capital of anything,” she asserts, “simply by saying so.” But we Anokans backed words with action. In the 1920s local …