Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 3, 2020 – With ample time now on hand, I figured it was now time to clean house, er, “garage.” Ours had long rivaled the Caine’s. They were the family that lived in a modern, flat-roofed house at the end of a long drive on a large river lot directly across the street from …
MAY 2, 2020 – Perhaps you and I see the same images. Perhaps we don’t, for we live in the Disunited States of America. In any case, witness gun-toting protesters in Michigan and beach crowds in California. “What?” They say. “A killer virus is afoot? It’ll take time . . . and patience . . …
MAY 1, 2020 – In school I got “schooled” in the First Amendment. It was essential for a free, civil, and democratic society. Now I’m unsure. My uncertainty, however, is not because I’ve lost faith in the foundational precept of our democracy. I’ve always understood the First Amendment as a “mixed water” faucet, from which …
APRIL 30, 2020 – (Cont.) . . . For the past few days leading up to that fateful day, town road crews had been hard at work on the streets north of Rice, putting down a coat of oil, then a thin blanket of sand. On the day at hand, it was our street’s turn. …
APRIL 29, 2020 – I was but six when I witnessed my first power play—not as in hockey but as in one man pulling rank on another. It occurred at about 1:00 on a hot, beautiful summer afternoon. I know the time, because that’s when our neighbor, Bob Ehlen, would’ve been heading back to his …
APRIL 28, 2020 – Recently my wife observed that in these times the neighborhood sounds like the neighborhood of our childhood—ours, not our sons’. Young kids are playing outside, making lots of old-fashioned noise. My wife thinks this is good. I suppose so, except when I’m trying to read out on the porch and the …
APRIL 27, 2020 – Earlier this month (See 4/5, 4/6 posts) I wrote about the classic, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I mentioned that Don Simón Rodriguez, the boyhood tutor of Simón Bolívar, El Libertador, had said of Defoe’s classic, “Everything you need to know is in this book.” I’m now three-quarters into the account …
APRIL 26, 2020 – Recently, down our alley I encountered our hotshot lawyer-neighbor sweeping furiously his garage floor—and immersing himself in a cloud of dust. I imagined him trying to destroy a hostile witness on cross-ex(amination). I also imagined my grandfather disapproving the way Mr. Hotshot was handling the broom. Born in 1895 Grandpa Holman …
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 …