Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 31, 2025 – At any moment in the course of human events, every member of society faces three basic big-picture questions: What’s happening? Based on what’s happening, what’s likely to happen in the future? How can and should one try to influence and adapt to what’s likely to happen? Since Trump’s inauguration, these three …
JANUARY 30, 2025 – (Cont.) After covering the “three levels of learning,” Professor Stavrou turned to the study of history generally. He emphasized that before you can assess what you’re reading on the history of most anything, you need to know the historian. Who is writing? What’s their background, their perspective, their springboard, their biases …
JANUARY 29, 2025 – (Cont.) If Professor Stavrou is the consummate inquisitive scholar, he is, I think a born educator in the loftiest sense of the term. He’s neither a pedant nor a pontificator but a man intensely dedicated to intellectual integrity and the joy of learning. Given his unusually lengthy career as both a …
JANUARY 28, 2025 – One day when I was a young kid, my sister Elsa came home from school reciting the name, Ponce de León, the explorer and conquistador who in 1513 led an expedition throughout what is now the state of Florida. Two hours later, Elsa remained enchanted by the name of the early …
JANUARY 27, 2025 – Each evening after I post to my blog, I spend a few minutes reviewing my FB “feeds” and “reels” feature skiing, classical music, Neil deGrasse Tyson talking physics and . . . drum roll, drum roll, barrel roll . . . airplane takeoffs and landings. Among the latter I also hear …
JANUARY 26, 2025 – Despite a concerted effort to divert myself from politics, politics tracks me down—even when I’m in a deep sleep. As I’ve previously divulged in several of my posts over the years, every night I dream up a storm. For me, sleep is like going to the movies—and I do mean plural. …
JANUARY 25, 2025 – This morning I picked up on our granddaughter’s cue yesterday. I eschewed the latest news, put all woes and worries aside and plunged into a self-directed art project. Actually, it’s an arts and craft project in the form of a “gnome home,” long neglected because in theory, anyway, the longer it …
JANUARY 24, 2025 – I apologize for what’s become a work-week-long rant over politics. Don’t worry, though: as a modern member of the species, I have a short attention span. In short order another barking dog will rattle my cage, capture my fleeting thoughts and pin them down until the next wildfire, school shooting, extreme …
JANUARY 23, 2025 – When I heard Republican Senators respond to the president’s blanket pardon of the J6 violent offenders, I experienced a bizarre physiological reaction over which I had no control. It ambushed me as I stood in our kitchen, rinsing dishes headed for the dishwasher. Fortunately, I was standing over the sink, and …
JANUARY 22, 2025 – We’ve all experienced in life days of unsettled and unsettling weather, in which several decks of angry clouds sail overhead like massive fleets of warships plying the high seas. Driven on a mortal mission, they grant no reprieve from gloom and despair. At times the overhead seas darkens suddenly in portent …
JANUARY 21, 2025 – Now that yesterday’s nightmare is over, I can move on with my usual routines. Except . . . It turns out that I was merely dreaming that the nightmare was over. News of Trump’s first-day fiats hit like golf ball-sized hailstones. A blanket pardon of the J6 hooligans? We knew it …
JANUARY 20, 2025 – Unlike my spouse, who this morning was in an adjoining room from me, her eyes, ears and mind riveted to the HGTV channel, I was online watching a live stream of the inauguration. When I resurfaced from immersion in two hours of shock and awe, my wife refused to hear a …
JANUARY 19, 2025 – As the world prepares for the improbable second inauguration of a flam-flam artist[1] gone so apparently legit, he garnered a majority of the popular vote for president of—get this—the United States of America, land of the free, home of the brave, domain of the eagle, and once a beacon for “[the] …
JANUARY 18, 2025 – Recently, I watched a Netflix documentary about the mind-boggling effort to build, launch and deploy James Webb. Of course, I’m not referring to the second NASA administrator by that name but the largest telescope ever built (by earthlings) and named in honor of him. The documentary reminded me of what I’ve …
JANUARY 17, 2025 – This morning I broke with routine, laying aside my History of the World Map by Map (See 1/10/25 post). For alternative entertainment, I flipped on the TV to Morning Joe to catch the latest cable opinions targeting an audience that already subscribes to those opinions. Instead of Joe Scarborough’s usual rants, …
JANUARY 16, 2025 – We who’ve been branded as “extremist, radical, leftist Democrats” (there being no other kind of Democrats, apparently), are accustomed to drawing parallels between Germany in the 1930s and America in the 2020s. These apt comparisons are supported and amplified by a broad cast of historians and political scientists who are intimately …
JANUARY 15, 2025 – I’m happy enough with my little stash of acorns—the exact location of which I know, unlike actual squirrels, who are notorious for amnesia—not to get too worked up about all the ways and means that the mega-wealthy in our society amass, stash and leverage their grand hoards of acorns. Academically speaking, …
JANUARY 14, 2025 – Last Sunday my wife and I took our nine-year-old granddaughter to a play at the renowned Children’s Theater Company (CTC) adjacent to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While we wandered around the lobby waiting for the theater doors to open, I noticed the “Land Acknowledgment” posted off to the side. It …
JANUARY 13, 2025 – Against the backdrop of the latest news stories, not to mention the many chronic conditions that plague our species, I feel a bit ridiculous writing about something as ordinary and unimportant as pockets; not air pockets or pockets of wealth or poverty or resistance but your basic pocket-pockets, as associated with …
JANUARY 12, 2025 – After blowin’ smoke, as I’m doing most of the time, today I broke from the mold and blew some snow. Overnight in these parts we received our third measurable snowfall of another wimpy winter. “Measurable” is a relative term; maybe an inch and a half, if you use you an elastic …
JANUARY 11, 2025 – The images of Armageddon coming out of southern California form a veritable horror film. For the time being, the apocalyptic movie diverts us from whatever else in the world would command our attention. Amidst the regular reports of the role of climate change in the disaster and finger-pointing at various levels …
JANUARY 10, 2025 – Lately, each morning while I consume my porridge,[1] I pore over a coffee-table-size book bearing the expansive title, History of the World Map by Map. It’s as much an historical atlas as it is a sweeping narrative of epochs and empires, movements and migrations that have shaped the world of homo …
JANUARY 9, 2025 – I hadn’t intended to tune into Jimmy Carter’s funeral this morning—televised from end-to-end—at the National Cathedral. After all, I had important things to do (skiing) and important places to go (up and down “St. Moritz” in “Little Switzerland,” the regional park a mile from our house) . . . once I’d …
JANUARY 8, 2025 – (Cont.) Under the mistaken assumption that life was good, I attempted to reconnect the main part of the Dyson with its long wand and floor brush roller. This action, however, ended nirvana abruptly: When I snapped the wand into its docking station on the combination handle/motor/filter/canister, the bottom of the canister …
JANUARY 7, 2025 – (Cont.) This unnerving development led me back to Google, this time with the critical search term, “video.” The top hit was a link to Tik Tok. I’d heard of Tik Tok, of course, but I’d never ventured forth. As a purist afflicted with a bad case of genetically-sourced OCD aversion to …