Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
APRIL 25, 2020 – Feeling outraged that America’s led by a village idiot, I think about this day in Portugal in 1974. That’s when the military initiated the largely bloodless “Carnation Revolution”—named so because citizens stuck carnations into rifle barrels of soldiers guarding the streets. It signaled the end of Estado Novo—the “New State”—under the …
APRIL 24, 2020 – Recently, Minnesota Governor Walz (one of America’s great governors) cautiously modified his “stay in place” order and allowed golf courses to open—but with appropriate restrictions aimed at The Virus. As a result, “Little Switzerland,” the hilly golf course where I hike/ski daily, is now crawling with golfers. Before the “stay put …
APRIL 23, 2020 – Putin’s Puppet has made me a believer in . . . states rights. After all these years as an armchair liberal, champion of wasteful federal spending; confiscatory taxes; and bureaucratic invasions of my freedom, liberties, and privacy—not to mention my God-given right to board unworthy aircraft, drink polluted water, eat contaminated …
APRIL 22, 2020 – Besides my daily excursion to the “mountains” of “Little Switzerland” (a local golf course), I take daily walks in the opposite direction. The route leads down our quiet block and the next, past a small park and to the edge of what I call the Ruhr Valley—in reality a busy route …
APRIL 21, 2020 – Across the room from where I write this sits a globe mounted on a floor stand. The Western Hemisphere faces me, with South America in apogee. This proximity triggers a memory from kindergarten. My parents had planned a winter break family road trip from Minnesota, down along the Mississippi River to …
APRIL 20, 2020 – In these upside-down times, explanations abound as to which way is up and which is down; the differences among black, white, and gray; that “up” is “down,” green is red, and black is bad. Math, anti-math, math models, science, non-science, news, “fake news,” fake “fake news,” and information—baked, half-baked, misperceived, misstated, …
APRIL 19, 2020 – Last night I reached episode 45 (of 60) in my binge-watch of the Netflix series, Bolívar. As with most any film treatment of historical figures, Bolívar includes much material that opens the work to criticism by historians—everything from inaccurate details to over-emphasized character strengths to under-stated character weaknesses to politically motivated …
APRIL 18, 2020 – Daily for a fortnight I’ve been doing “deep breathing” exercises for meditative reprieve from anxiety. One of the exercises calls for sitting comfortably, eyes closed, and thinking of a word, five or six times, as you inhale, then another word, again repetitively, as you exhale. The selected words should relieve stress—like, …
APRIL 17, 2020 – Yesterday evening my book club gathered via Zoom. Up for discussion was The Plague by French existentialist author, Albert Camus, winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. It had been selected by the physician of our group, the inimitable Ravi Balasubrahmanyan. (Decades ago, I learned to spell his name by …
APRIL 16, 2020 – As the world struggles with The Virus, we’re learning that the spread of an invisible, highly contagious pathogen is as big a threat to humans as humans are to humans. But this attention-grabbing contagion is doing lots more than making people sick. It’s revealing in stark fashion many of the flaws …
APRIL 15, 2020 – Recently, all set to “do our taxes” by the traditional deadline, I realized that thanks to The Virus, the filing deadline is now July 15. Then a client called: what could he do with retail clients who can’t pay rent? (Fortunately, the client’s property isn’t mortgaged.) “Negotiate,” I said, “but condition …
APRIL 14, 2020 – Today marks the one-year anniversary of my blog. This is my 337th posting—so far. (The “missing” entries were from a two-week wedding sojourn in Portugal last June and another fortnight wedding extravaganza (same matrimonial couple) stateside in August.) At 500-words per post, the total wordage piles up to 168,500 (not counting …
APRIL 13, 2020 – We are deep into the era in which millions of Americans can’t hear Cassandra say, “I told you so.” Even when irrefutable evidence and ironclad proof fill the eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils of a naysayer or human ostrich, the truth of her prior warnings is denied or ignored. When Bush …
APRIL 12, 2020 – When I peered out the window this morning, I was happy to see daylight, but unhappy that the sun was hiding behind a thick overcast. As a skiing fanatic, I was happy to see snow on the ground. As a rationale adult I was unhappy to see snow on the ground. …
APRIL 11, 2020 – (Cont.) Göran edged his way down to a point where the ledge swung to the right, narrowed to nearly nothing, then bent left around the mountainside, out of sight a few feet before turning right again, coming back into view. I saw him clutch a small, rock formation at the bend, …
APRIL 10, 2020 – My daily breakfast fare includes blueberries. Each serving reminds me of the time I (nearly) fell from an airplane and (actually) landed in heaven—the largest patch of wild blueberries on earth. This defining event occurred two-thirds of the way through my Grand Odyssey around the globe. Years later, when my mother …
APRIL 9, 2020 – Now more than ever, we see the importance of government . . . and business; or more precisely, the difference between good and bad. In the time of Corvid-19—without central, collective, organized effort by government and business, huge swaths of human population, if not all people within a given geographical area …
APRIL 8, 2020 – Little did any of us appreciate back in January how monumental those impeachment proceedings would be. While GoebbelsNews and Republicans drank and dispensed the Kook-Aid, Democrats experienced a collective apoplectic fit over Trump’s plain-as-his-own-words “high crime and misdemeanor.” The Blue Team saw the very essence of American democracy on the line. …
APRIL 7, 2020 – Yesterday morning I was doing just fine minding my own business, in full retreat from the world, head stuck in the sand while I listened to Mozart. But then, by the habit of the age, I sneaked onto social media. I scrolled down my Facebook “newsfeed,” then switched to two different …
APRIL 6, 2020 – (Cont.) The next day came. My sister Jenny called from New York to give us a full report on the view from her family’s apartment. In the sitting room adjoining my wife’s book office, I put Jenny on speaker and chatted away. The conversation drew my wife from her office (her …
APRIL 5, 2020 – A week ago while out for a walk, my wife and I encountered our neighbor Kent, who was himself out for a walk–his good wife Joan, a 3M health specialist, was working hard from home. At a distance of a lot more than twice the recommended gap, we carried on a …
APRIL 4, 2020 – As is the case with everyone these days, I’m learning how to deal with stress created by The Crisis. Yesterday, I discovered some “deep breathing” exercises. By the time it had occurred to me to search “deep breathing” online, the sun had slipped under the horizon, and the outside temperature had …
APRIL 3, 2020 – Social distancing now being imperative, I recall my encounter with its polar opposite. Thirty-nine years ago, in my callow youth, I saw fit to see India—alone, or so I thought. Naïveté, I soon learned, is an essential human trait—without it, wholly insane but totally wonderful things in life would never occur. …
APRIL 2, 2020 – Raise your hand if you want to live in a country where decades after Stalin’s excesses had been suffered by millions and revealed to millions more, people would demonstrate their adoration of the man by posting his portrait publicly, ringed with flowers. Or signal approval if you’d wanted to live in …
APRIL 1, 2020 – Even in crisis, maintain humor, especially on April Fool’s Day. On this day eons ago, our two sons devised what they thought was a brilliantly hilarious prank. In fact, it was brilliant in its simplicity, but hilarious only to our sons, since my wife or I was always on the receiving …