Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 14, 2024 – (Cont.) Saturday’s nearly six hours of heavy labor left me feeling as I had every time after skiing the 52km American Birkebeiner Ski Marathon. I was so utterly exhausted, my walk was down to a shuffle. I was afraid to lie down for fear I wouldn’t be able to get back …
MAY 13, 2024 – (Cont.) Although I know the basic rules of chess, I’m no chess player, and on the few occasions when I’ve humored an actual chess player among extended family members, my lack of skill has become evident within my first three moves. Yet I have an immense appreciation for chess, which, as …
MAY 12, 2024 – Blogger’s Note: This post is yet another interruption of The Neighbors series. The title of this immediate post (and tomorrow’s) is a reference to Maynard Pirsig’s philosophical discourse in chronicling his “oneness” with a motorcycle on a wind-in-his face trip across big sky country of the American West. Likewise, “Zen and the …
MAY 11, 2024 – During moving day in August 1961, our family became next door neighbors of ourselves. A year or two before, my parents had purchased the adjacent vacant lot from our neighbor Dr. Spurzem a few doors down and spent months planning their dream home. I remember well the process. Late into the …
MAY 10, 2024 – Next to the Holland cottage was the Violet compound occupying the sweeping rounded corner where the west end of Rice Street and the south end of Levee Avenue blended together. As the maxim of real estate valuation goes, “location, location, location.” Though the lot was across the street from the Mississippi, …
MAY 9, 2024 – Next door (upstream along the Mississippi River) to Caines lived the Moores. The parents, Fred and Ruth, were smart, sharp, kind, cultured, and civic minded, and from my perspective, their impressive house and yard reflected their well-deserved reputation as pillars of the community. I’ll save them for last. For now, I’ll …
MAY 8, 2024 – (Cont.) On warm weather afternoons Bill would stroll down the driveway to retrieve the mail. Hanging from a crosspiece was a wooden square bearing the family name below a silhouetted hunter, gun raised toward silhouetted ducks flying across the top of square. If Bill wasn’t an avid worker, he was an …
MAY 7, 2024 – (Cont.) Caines also owned two Labradors—a black and a yellow. Back in those days dogs enjoyed far more freedom than is the case today. Stormy, the black Lab, wandered freely, at least in our immediate section of the neighborhood. He never took a bite out of my lip, but his size …
MAY 6, 2024 – Next door to Bob Ehlen lived the Caines—Bill and Molly and their three kids—whose grounds and household were as scruffy and unorganized as Bob Ehlen’s were well manicured and buttoned-down. Our old house at Rice and Green faced the Caine chaos, which was perpetually in session. The center of their three-ring …
MAY 5, 2024 – Recently I tried to imagine the experience of a 10- to 15-minute stroll on the surface of Mercury, our solar system’s inner-most planet. My “what if” thought was inspired by what Dava Sobel has so to say about it in her acclaimed book, The Planets. The key features of the speedy …
MAY 4, 2024 – Before we moved to our new house at 505 Rice from our old house next door at the corner of Green and Rice, I hung out a lot right there at the corner street sign. I remember well the day a few weeks short of first grade when I figured out …
MAY 3, 2024 – Among my favorite children’s books when our sons were young were the Frog and Toad stories by Arnold Lobel. I enjoyed the illustrations, the writing, and the story lines. The books experienced a revival in our home when our eight-year-old granddaughter reached reading age. They are certain to be enjoyed as …
MAY 2, 2024 – Back in the day when lawyers wrote with a golden nib and spoke with a silver tongue, no member of the bar thought about marketing or advertising. In fact, until I entered law school in the 1976 of the Current Era (with emphasis on Current) advertising was strictly verboten. Part of …
MAY 1, 2024 – Last week as I joined the other passengers inching our way down the entrance ramp onto the Delta plane that would fly us from BDL to MSP, I noticed the checkered condition of the paint on the outside of the fuselage around the doorway. Obviously, the A320-200 had been in service …
APRIL 30, 2024 – I looked forward to writing today’s post. Having junked out on news reports about current events—everything from the war on Gaza to the college campus protests to the Hush Money Trial to what planet Bill Barr is on—I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say …
APRIL 29, 2024 – Recently, five of us from our clan attended a wedding and reception just outside of the little ski resort town of Windham in the Catskills. The bride was the daughter of the legendary “Cliff” from my Inheritance series posted last summer right here on this blogsite. For me wedding was a …
APRIL 28, 2024 – It being a Sunday morning, I poured myself a cup of Java, repaired to the reading room, leaned back in my easy(-going) chair, put on some very dead white guy music, and last but best . . . pulled up the Sunday edition of The Times on my laptop screen. Ah-h-h! …
APRIL 27, 2024 – (Cont.) Dr. Borrud, his wife Shirley and their three daughters—Lori, Aleta, and Becky—replaced the Spurzems in the Tudor house. The stolid Norwegian doctor, a founding member of the American Academy of Family Medicine, was just 10 days older than my dad. Recruited to the (modern) clinic on Main Street at the …
APRIL 26, 2024 – We live in the Age of Opinion, or more precisely, the Age of Cacophonous Opinion—informed, uninformed and misinformed; often in one-off unorganized bursts, sometimes in regular outrages devoured by legions of subscribers gathered by a common algorithm; scattered to the crosswinds of social media yet occasionally framed according to logic and …
APRIL 25, 2024 – Often I experience highly symbolic dreams. Perhaps the most symbolic occurred 27 years ago during a particularly stressful period at work. In that dream I found myself in a game of pickle-in-the-middle—playing the role of pickle. The other two players were my boss, with whom in reality I’d long been tangling, …
APRIL 24, 2024 – Dr. and Mary Spurzem lived in the elegant authentic appearing Tudor house—with a slate roof, brick-and-timber facing and lots of dormers—next to Gladys and Charlie. Spurzems were quite a lot older than my parents. From the days of my earliest memories, I’d wanted to see the inside of the house, but …
APRIL 23, 2024 – Next door to the Benzians lived Harlan Thurston and his wife, and next to them, Harlan’s brother, Clayton and his wife and son, Gladys and Charlie. If I was ever inside Harlan’s house, it would’ve been ever so briefly—seconds, maybe—and in the company of my mother in connection with some fund-raising …
APRIL 22, 2024 – In a sleek, elegant, modern, low-profile house with a well-maintained lawn that swept down to the Mississippi River lived the Benzians—Dick and Margaret and their three sons, Peter, John, and Stephen. From the street, the house was all but hidden by trees that separated the dwelling from the open half of …
APRIL 21, 2024 – Replacing the Tobins were the Joslyns—Warren, the dad, a realtor and jazz trombone player; Audrey, the mom, who was always well attired and perfectly even-keeled and had some part-time job outside the home, and the four boys: Mark, in Nina’s class; Dave, two years ahead of me; Jim, two years behind …
APRIL 20, 2024 – The next family to move into the Perkins’ old house on Rice Street were the Tobins. Mr. Tobin was a traveling salesman of whom sightings were extremely rare. He drove the family’s nice car, I remember—a late model Mercury—while his easy-going wife Mickey was stuck with an ancient green Ford. I …