Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 1, 2025 – Progressive Insurance has long entertained us with a brilliant ad campaign featuring the fictitious “Dr. Rick,” who conducts seminars to help new homeowners avoid turning into their parents. Of course, we Boomers, especially, laugh at these vignettes because they remind us of ourselves—and our parents. Today while working on the cabin …
SEPTEMBER 30, 2025 – Today I’d planned on more Zen, more nirvana; after all, I was still at the Red Cabin, our “Shangri-La,” still working on the “Pergola-on-a-Platform” project. But on some days, the Buddhist ideal remains high up in the clouds when you find yourself down in the lowland weeds. Straight out of the …
SEPTEMBER 29, 2025 – I’d planned to return home today, leaving at around 2:00 to arrive home around the time our almost 10-year-old granddaughter finishes her weekly real-time, online art class. My wife signed her up for the classes, and we’ve developed the Monday routine of picking her up from school, taking her to our …
SEPTEMBER 28, 2025 – (Cont.) At the outset of my Pergola-on-a-Platform project, I’d scoped out a site inside the 20-acre (give or take) tree garden behind the lake frontage. I sought the intersection of three geographic features. The first was one of the trails that crisscross the garden. I imagined that the pergola platform would …
SEPTEMBER 27, 2025 – Fifty years from now, historians studying our era will try to tease out the underlying ingredients and catalysts and analyze their interactions. I say 50 years, because as the great German historian, Leopold von Ranke (1795 – 1886) purportedly advocated, no history worth reading can be written without the perspective of …
SEPTEMBER 26, 2025 – Sorry, Minnesota, Ramsey County and St. Paul: I used to shop at the Midway Menards store near our house. During the week I’d load up on supplies and materials for DYI projects at the Red Cabin and on weekends, ferry them up to the Northwoods. But recently I noticed I’d been …
SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 – Today my wife and her traveling companions (three of her cousins) arrived back from a 12-day sojourn in Ireland. Early this morning I checked on the flight status to see if the seven-hour trip was delayed in getting under way. It had departed as scheduled. Three hours later I checked again …
SEPTEMBER 24, 2025 – I’d heard it was “bad”—really bad—but until I later watched the video of Trump’s speech before the UN General Assembly I had no idea just how bad his performance was. To my friends, family members, and acquaintances who to this day either actively support or acquiesce in this mad man’s continuation …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2025 – Yesterday, for anticipated entertainment value akin to watching the trailer for the latest blockbuster monster movie, I Googled “Charlie Kirk funeral.” As with a horror film, I had no intention—or stomach—for watching anything besides brief excerpts, especially when I saw the duration of the production digitally-displayed in the corner—over five (!) …
SEPTEMBER 22, 2025 – The film tells us little of Quisling’s ascendancy to power—as it were; he’s not depicted as a megalomaniac or Il Duce character, though as head of the Nordisk folkereisning i Norge, or “Nordic popular rising in Norway,” a political action group established in the early 1930s, Quisling was known as its fører—the …
SEPTEMBER 21, 2025 – (Cont.) The best stories are ones that tell us about ourselves, and Quisling: The Final Days, does just that. Not that we’re traitors. Few of us, in fact, would see anything of ourselves in the flawed eponymous character. Enter, however, Peder Olsen, a hospital chaplain assigned by the Right Reverend Eivind …
SEPTEMBER 20, 2025 – I can’t remember how old I was when I first heard the name, “Vidkun Quisling,” but it was my dad you said it. And you can bet that Dad used the word “traitor” to describe the Norwegian “Minister President” during the German occupation of Norway. So did everyone else who invoked …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2025 – Among other books I’m currently reading, I’ve been chipping away at a travel guide that my wife had picked up at a thrift shop many years ago and that had somehow resurfaced recently. It’s called, Asia Overland – A Practical Economy – Minded Guide to the Exotic Wonders of the East …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2025 – Thanks to the confluence of a host of factors, we’re a nation whose hair is on fire. I’m in the camp that . . . well, anyone who’s followed my blog for long knows which camp I’m in, or maybe the better way to put it is, “which camp I’m definitely …
SEPTEMBER 17, 2025 – “That’s why . . .” I said to our granddaughter while in the car on the way home today, “we shouldn’t take anyone for granted.” I’d just told her the real-life story below. “What does ‘take for granted mean’?” she asked. When I explained the idiom, she easily grasped the concept. …
SEPTEMBER 16, 2025 – Israel’s IDF (or has it by now earned the label, “IWF,” for “Israeli War Force”?) is at it again. Strike that (pun fully intended). “The IDF (IWF) is at it still. I just don’t “get it.” Well, okay, on one level, I understand some of the dynamics at play, particularly the …
SEPTEMBER 15, 2025 – This morning brought ideal weather to the shores of Grindstone Lake. For a good two hours, I was in my Zen zone, working on the 2 x 12 x 81-inch reclaimed stringers that will be incorporated into my “Pergola-on-a-Platform” high up in the tree garden. After many weeks of sketching, measuring, …
SEPTEMBER 24, 2924 – If I were Gilgamesh or Noah and knew the big flood was coming, I wouldn’t limit my response to construction of one ark and restrict access to passengers from the animal kingdom plus my wife, sons and their wives. I’d build a whole fleet of arks, and when God asked, “What …
SEPTEMBER 13, 2025 – Today I was an observer at the Chequamegon 40, the mountain trail bike race I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The experience brought back many pleasant memories that kept at bay all current woes of the world. In the first place, the race reminded me closely of the American Birkebeiner Ski Race, …
SEPTEMBER 13, 2025 – My wife was in a funk today, mostly over the state of the country. She’d been in funksville—as many of us were—even before the shooting(s), but gun violence in America is a chronic condition for which an antidote eludes us. I managed to escape funksville today, thanks to some random encounters …
SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 – I’d like to travel across the country, that is, through the countryside, small towns, medium-size communities, and big cities. I’d like to go up and down the coasts, the Northeast, the Northwest, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Deep South, the Midwest, the West, plus the great outlier states, Alaska and Hawaii. …
SEPTEMBER 10, 2025 – This morning I glanced at the usual news from crazy town and immediately deflected it by resuming work on my latest in-town construction project: a giant mobile easel for our oldest son’s vehicular window tinting business. He hopes to resume the enterprise after a long hiatus due to health concerns. He …
SEPTEMBER 9, 2025 – Today’s edition of the NYT included an eye-grabbing article, “Reading Skills of 12th Graders Hits New Low.” The second sentence in the article was, “Their math scores fell as well.” Given the critical importance of reading and math skills to . . . well . . . a healthy democracy and …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2025 – This morning I watched the full hour-plus-long video of a media Q and A session with John Shin, a free-lance violinist, his wife, also a musician, and his attorney in the attorney’s office in Utah. Based on this stunning, revelatory presentation, I concluded that what we’re all witnessing is “the Mephisto …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2025 – Today I enjoyed three disparate experiences that suggest our ship isn’t listing quite as fast or dramatically as it seemed to me after reading this morning’s headlines. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that the ship is free of serious problems below the waterline or that the furniture on the Lido deck …