Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 15, 2023 – Today the weather gods smiled, and gave a taste of spring-skiing. As I skated down the ski track, up and down dale, I noticed a number of weekenders on the course—friends on a lark; parents with young kids; older folks, gliding along slowly but surely. Citizen racers were few. Doubtless they …
JANUARY 14, 2023 – Memory: I’m fascinated by the details it holds amidst a vast ocean of time, images, encounters and impressions. Take for example, the exact words of Mr. Cavanaugh in social studies class my freshman year of high school: “If you analyze people, you lose them.” More details: He wore a tweed jacket …
JANUARY 13, 2023 – My dad was such a devout moderate he was paradoxically extreme. His inspiration might’ve been James Hilton’s classic, Lost Horizons, an old copy of which could be found on the shelves of my parents’ den. As the Buddhist monk in the story explained, “At the monastery we’re extreme in our moderation.” …
JANUARY 12, 2023 – Today a reader-friend asked me: Are you accident prone? Are you a risk taker? Are you foolish? These questions were prompted by yesterday’s post about the bite of a bungee cord. I answered “no” to the first two. To the third I responded that another reader often calls me after a …
JANUARY 11, 2023 – From space the earth is a peaceful orb, pleasantly blue and green with shades of tan and brown, wrapped in white, whimsical swirls. But down at ground level, earth is home to chaos, dangers, and disruptions. Take, for example, winter in Minnesota. More specifically, damn winter ice dams in Minnesota. Ice …
JANUARY 10, 2023 – The more I “mature,” the wider my education gap grows and the deeper a realization sinks in: there’s little I can do to mitigate the trend. It’s in our nature—by evolutionary necessity and practical convenience—to assume we know everything about one thing or rather, about a lot of things. Similar to …
JANUARY 9, 2023 – Last night I experienced my usual kaleidoscope of dreams. In one segment, I was leading my wife on a chase through the back, cluttered offices of a bank. Our objective was to cash a check. She wore an N95 mask, but I’d forgotten mine, so I held my breath as we …
JANUARY 8, 2023 – Movies, filled with dramatic distortions, embellishments and exaggerations, are often an unreliable source of historical information. Just as often, however, despite the lack of factual reliability, a film will stir the viewer’s curiosity and prompt further investigation of the historical record. That was the case when I stumbled across the 2014 …
JANUARY 7, 2023 – Followers of this blog know that in the course of my stem cell transplant procedure back in late August, Drs. Killjoy (both of them) told me, “No more downhill skiing for you. Cross-country, fine; downhill, no.” Their perfectly sound reasoning was that the multiple myeloma had turned my skeleton into “Swiss …
JANUARY 6, 2023 – (Cont.) Out of the wrecker cab dropped a driver from central casting—a burly, bearded fellow, wearing blue transition-glasses, a baseball cap, heavy-duty gloves and a green safety vest. His name was “Jim.” and he proved to be as much a witty conversationalist as he was an engineer on the fly. He’d …
JANUARY 5, 2023 – (Cont.) But we still had the stuck vehicles to worry about. John had plenty of devices and equipment for pulling his tractor out of the snow, but I couldn’t see how my car could be rescued much before spring. I was prepared to abandon it until then. In that case, however, …
JANUARY 4, 2023 – Mylène got her wish: being snowed in at the cabin as the world around us turned into a winter wonderland. While for several days we’d enjoyed the gorgeous winter scenery outside, and inside, played cards and Scrabble and kept the wood-burning stove loaded with oak, the window was closing on our …
JANUARY 3, 2023 – When it came to games at our family cabin, my two older sisters led the way, as they did in most endeavors. From an early age, I lost to my smarter elders at War, Go to the Dump, regular checkers, and Chinese checkers—the games of choice, because they were the only …
JANUARY 2, 2023 – The pre-Christmas weather that besieged the country, smashed indiscriminately through our woods. From a comfortable distance we worried about power, plumbing and heating at the Red Cabin. Trees and wildlife, meanwhile, took a beating. The first visible casualties were four 30-year-old Norways that we’d planted on conservancy land near the entrance …
JANUARY 1, 2023 – Happy New Year cheers to all my readers! May 2023 bring you good health and lots of happiness. And may it bring a measure of peace and prosperity to the world. Yesterday, I celebrated the end of an eventful year by skiing for an hour on the American Birkebeiner Trail, the …
DECEMBER 31, 2022 – I arrived here at the Red Cabin yesterday after dark and found no internet service, since our rooftop satellite dish on which we’re dependent for connectivity, was buried under two feet of snow. I pictured myself like an early settler having to “rough it.” That is, still with mobile phone coverage, …
DECEMBER 30, 2022 – (Cont.) Just as the train pulled to a stop at the closest station, my tires gripped, shooting my “bubble car” past the tracks and fishtailing across the street in front of oncoming traffic. Ahead lay the clinic with a “Covid Vaccinations Here” sign sticking out of a snowbank near the entrance. …
DECEMBER 29, 2022 – In retrospect, I’m surprised by my adaptation to circumstances, but a couple of days ago, behind my astonishment lay self-doubt and rising fear. For the past 13 months I’ve lived a “bubble existence.” It was that long ago that I was last inside someone else’s house—the Connecticut home of our son …
DECEMBER 28, 2022 – (Cont.) I think of people as candles, each bearing a flame. Most people illuminate their immediate surroundings, then fade and disappear; some people light up the world before their flames flicker, then die. A few burn most powerfully after the wax and wick are long gone. Mozart is an example of …
DECEMBER 27, 2022 – Going back years, our neighbors and we been quite familiar with rabbit holes. In our case, the openings are at various locations around the base of our back porch. The rabbits are ubiquitous—down the holes and throughout the backyard and gardens. Inexplicably, the twitching-nosed, standing-eared, bug-eyed creatures stay clear of the …
DECEMBER 26, 2022 – I’m well into that paradoxical stage of life when the more I learn, the more I learn I haven’t. This is particularly true of my knowledge of history; not just what’s “fascinating” but what’s necessary for an understanding of the world and essential to counter repetition of its darkest moments. Some …
DECEMBER 25, 2022 – My wife is a loyal fan of CBS News Sunday Morning. I’m not, and I don’t have a good reason for my non-fan status. Often, while sitting in an adjoining room hammering out my daily post, I’ll hear Beth laugh in amusement over some feature of the show or call out, …
DECEMBER 24, 2022 – Grandpa Nilsson was a fairly serious guy, though he often kidded my sisters and me and laughed at his own jokes. At Christmas he injected a bit of scatological levity into the spirit of things. “’Twas the night before Christmas,” he’d say, “when all through the house, not a creature was …
DECEMBER 23, 2022 – This year I’ve fully grasped that none of us is as rugged or independent as claimed by our culture of “freedom” and “liberty.” I became acutely aware of my dependence. The great “cure” for the delusion of self-reliance, I discovered, was serious illness; diagnosis and treatment of a “killer disease” depended …
DECEMBER 22, 2022 – (Cont.) “We’ve got to get our skiing in before it gets cold,” I said. The skier knew I’d said something but hadn’t heard what it was. Out of politeness, the athlete stopped, pulled down a face covering and removed an earbud. Three facts struck me simultaneously: 1. Music had obscured my …