Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 10, 2026 – Rarely do we find pleasure in facing our abject failures—let alone in talking out loud about them. I think this aspect of the human condition is a survival instinct. If we were to dwell on our defeats, we’d sink further into a quagmire of hopelessness, endangering our very continuation as a …
MAY 9, 2026 – Yesterday I heard a story from the horse’s mouth, as it were—that is, testimony that was non-hearsay. Though the story wasn’t told under oath, the witness was eminently trustworthy and credible. The cautionary tale was a chilling firsthand account of authoritarianism. Moreover, the example wasn’t an abstraction or something that “happens …
MAY 8, 2026 – In continuation of the pursuit of continuing legal education (“CLE”) credits, I’m in the middle of a six-hour webinar symposium on “Universal and Quality Health Care,” sponsored by the University of St. Thomas School of Law (St. Paul, MN). Again, along with a host of UST-sponsored CLE courses on constitutional law …
MAY 7, 2026 – For anyone who’s attended an actual concert, this evening’s occasion at our granddaughter’s school was more of a pep rally. In any case, concert or pep rally, the event was staged in the gymnasium of Central Park Elementary School. Covering the high wall behind the risers where the students would face …
MAY 6, 2026 – Today’s edition of The Times carried a guest essay entitled, “Give us the Aliens” by my favorite scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. In his usual jocular style, he poked fun at our enduring perception of aliens as very human-like in appearance—a torso to which are attached, two arms (each with a hand), …
MAY 5, 2026 – Sooner or later it was bound to happen: the Teflon would suffer a big scratch. Heretofore . . . The “Access Hollywood tape”? Ancient history. The “perfect phone call”? No one remembers—or cares. January 6? A Democratic plot. DOGE butchery without accounting? Old news, forgotten pain. ICE? Same. Assaults on the …
MAY 4, 2026 – My work-week routine is to consult briefly my sundry information sources as they stand at the top of the day, then head out on my well-traveled hour-long path to, throughout and back from “Little Switzerland.” I often use hiking time to mull over potential material for the day’s blog post. Today …
MAY 3, 2026 – This morning we—the two “work camp badge winners” from yesterday, and I as work camp director—wrestled with a first world problem while the rest of the world wrangled with real world problems. Our “first world problem” was the broken but still attached tree trunk dangling like the sword of Damocles or, …
MAY 2, 2026 – This morning I put all concerns about the larger world aside—along with most of my personal worries—and drove straight to the Red Cabin. Well, not exactly straight there. In Cumberland, Wisconsin I encountered a detour, which took me straight east, not north, all the way to Rice Lake, halfway across Wisconsin, …
MAY 1, 2026 – Long before the Trump Era, I used to muse that “In America one could find the best of life and the worst of life.” This observation was not particularly insightful. After all, we have a population of around 340 million living within 3.8 million square miles spread across 58 degrees of …
APRIL 30, 2026 – Today while I was striding along toward the end of my daily walk, with both hiking poles now in one hand, I heard a neighbor call out. M. was out walking her aging canine friend and approaching the quiet intersection I’d just crossed. I acknowledged her greeting, and since I was …
APRIL 29, 2026 – The sound reminds me of a grandfather clock with a malfunctioning escapement mechanism. Instead of a steady “tick-tock . . . tick-tock” we hear, “tick . . . tock-tock . . . TOCK . . . tick-TOCK” and so on, ad nauseam, day after day. The source of the erratic noise …
APRIL 28, 2026 – Some time ago I wrote here about my directional disorientation during a family trip to Korea in 2000. I constantly confused the east coast of the Korean Peninsula with the west coast. Whenever I saw or heard mention of one side or the other, my brain would confuse it with the …
APRIL 27, 2026 – I remember the monthly departmental lunch meeting at my old law firm when our fearless leader reached the agenda item expressed simply as, “E-mail.” The newly hired techno-geeks had just rolled out the “new system,” and with many senior lawyers kicking and screaming, the venerable old firm was stumbling into the …
APRIL 26, 2026 – Most of the afternoon and early this evening was art and play time with our 10-year-old granddaughter. Today was the last day of the annual spectacular Art in Bloom exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art—an event not to be missed, especially in the company of Illiana. At closing time, we …
APRIL 25, 2026 – If for no reason but to keep tally of the latest assaults on American interests by . . . the American presidency in league with House and Senate enablers . . . today I’d intended to write about those offenses. Random material, however, disrupted my plan unexpectedly. The diversion occurred as …
APRIL 24, 2026 – Late this afternoon I visited our local compost site—after Beth had already hauled a load of leaves to the place earlier in the day. My assigned task was first to corral an unorganized collection of shrub clippings, birch branches, dead day lilies raked out of the garden, and last December’s Tannenbaum …
APRIL 23, 2026 – Having finished reading one book—a “barn burner,” as my dad would’ve called it—by Ned Blackhawk, entitled The Rediscovery of America, I’m closing in on the finish line of another book, The Korean War, a deeply troubling revisionist history by Bruce Cumings, a noted American scholar of modern Korean history. I’m waiting …
APRIL 21, 2026 – Yesterday’s post was a milestone in the life of this blog: it marked the 2,500 time I’ve slapped an “original anecdote, commentary, rumination [or] occasional pontification” onto the board and hit “Publish.” For the first four years, I observed a self-imposed limit of 500 words per post, but with my extended …
APRIL 21, 2026 – (Cont.) Illiana took great interest in the photographs as I displayed them one by one. Many were of her father and uncle when they were young kids, and they brought many fond memories to life. The best of the lot captured the two brothers on the beach by the Sand Bar …
APRIL 20, 2026 – One of the countless wonders of life on earth is that each human being is its own universe. Since the species first appeared, roughly 200,000 years ago—give or take a few millennia—an estimated 117 billion of us have roamed the earth in one state of confusion or another. (According to the …
APRIL 19, 2026 – If ever there were a case for the superiority of experts over amateurs, we’re seeing it play out in the current fiasco over Iran. According to the latest reporting, the sometime Appalachian memoirist JD Vance,[1] along with the stereotypical New York real estate developer Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, all-around grifter …
APRIL 18, 2026 – All the people who’ve died or will die in Africa because of the end of USAID? We’ll never get them back. All the people who will perish because funding of cancer research funded by the federal government was ripped into sawdust by the chainsaw of DOGE? We’ll never get them back. …
APRIL 17, 2026 – (Cont.) In the abstract, “doing one’s duty” and “doing the right thing” sound so simple and straight forward. But as the venerable and inimitable Professor Maynard Pirsig, Sr. (as distinguished from “Jr.,” author of The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) was wont to do in my criminal law class, he’d say, “Suppose …
APRIL 16, 2026 – Whenever my wife and I get together with friends, conversation invariably touches three bases: 1. Health reports; 2. Shared political angst; and 3. Latest streaming favs. Oh yeah, and occasionally, as in always, we’ll talk kids and grandkids. Generally, I try to tune out the health reports, keeping my own to …