Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
AUGUST 20, 2020 – She was born on this day 124 years ago. We called her “Gaga” because at the babbling stage, my oldest sister called our other grandmother just plain, “Ga.” When confronted with a second grandmother, my inventive sister simply doubled up. Gaga’s name was “Orrell,” after the village of “Ore Hill” in …
AUGUST 19, 2020 – [Cont.] pretended Dad’s garden shovel was Stanley, the steam shovel in one of my Golden Books, and the wheelbarrow was a one-wheel version of my big toy dump truck. As I watched, Dad and Grandpa met two challenges with one source of dirt—what left the basement was hauled first to the …
AUGUST 18, 2020 – My dad was possibly the only man in the history of DIY projects who excavated manually, not one but two basements—concurrently. One basement was at our house in Anoka, Minnesota— “Basement No. 1.” The other—“Basement No. 2”—was at the family cabin in northwest Wisconsin. The Anoka house was built in ancient …
AUGUST 17, 2020 – As I kayak along the shoreline, I admire the big pine that were much smaller when my grandparents were alive. I reflect on all that has occurred in the world since they bought this property in the fall of 1939. World War II had just begun with Germany’s Blitzkreig against Poland. …
AUGUST 16, 2020 – [Cont.] Fritz had no handle on spoken German . . . except . . . dinner table grace. When Fritz was a kid, a family ritual was Sunday dinner with his grandparents. Part of the ritual was Grandpa Angst reciting a short grace—in German. Fritz learned to rattle it off just …
AUGUST 15, 2020 – After reading this week about: the Florida sheriff ordering his staff not to wear face masks; the Trump campaign’s effort to undermine the postal service and create doubts about the integrity of the electoral process so as to delegitimize an unfavorable result; the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet now being beyond …
AUGUST 14, 2020 – In these fraught times, I find peace in things that will survive our troubles. Things like . . . trees, for example. Here at the Red Cabin, we’re surrounded by thousands of trees, but I’m determined to add thousands more pine—the species that dominated the landscape here for centuries before “progress” …
AUGUST 13, 2020 – Yesterday I left the Red Cabin late. I had a dental appointment back in Minneapolis, three hours away, and was cutting it close. A client’s early morning curveball had detained me. I’d need to follow up immediately after my teeth were cleaned. With ignition, the radio yanked me into the middle …
AUGUST 12, 2020 – Not so long ago we said of ourselves that we were a deeply polarized nation. We’re now a poisoned nation. Let’s start with Covid. There’s much we still don’t know about the disease, but there’s also much we do know about it. One thing is that wearing masks limits its transmission. …
AUGUST 11, 2020 – If you’ve had elevated eye pressure or family history of glaucoma, perhaps you’ve experienced a periodic “visual field test.” It’s conducted by a machine consisting of a white, two-foot high, vertical half-dome (which I call, “Yosemite”) equipped with a chinrest on the open side, allowing you to stare motionless at the …
AUGUST 10, 2020 – For several years our household has survived with one car. Yesterday though, I wanted to head to the Red Cabin two days before my wife could join me. My younger sister, long-marooned with her husband in New York, graciously allowed me to borrow her car, garaged in Minneapolis. After loading up, …
AUGUST 9, 2020 – Early on I was destined for Ayn Rand Land. One of my grandpas was “Ragnar,” the name of the hero-privateer in Rand’s best-seller, Atlas Shrugged. My other grandpa was a businessman. My dad was an arch-conservative, meaning my mom had to go along. Then the kicker: my oldest sister, an intellectual …
AUGUST 8, 2020 – On our recent trip to Connecticut, we passed through Middletown, home of prestigious Wesleyan University. My wife, who’s traveled far but never resided outside the Midwest, pronounced it “Middle-TOWN.” “I think it’s ‘Middle-TUN,’” I said. I knew this mainly because my oldest sister, an alumna of Connecticut College in New London, …
AUGUST 7, 2020 – That applies to me but also to my bro-in-law “GK.” In further coincidence, he was born in the same hospital as was his wife, my younger sister, years later—a converted Victorian house on Ferry Street in Anoka, Minnesota. You could tell it was a hospital: a modestly sized, bluish neon “HOSPITAL” …
AUGUST 6, 2020 – After a two-week break from breaking news, I read many anxiety-enhancing articles in today’s paper version of . . . the paper. Our delivery person never lands The Times close to our doorstep. Instead, the person randomly flings the paper at our front yard, where “All the News That’s Fit to …
AUGUST 5, 2020 – While the rest of the world battled its way through another two days, my wife and I drove from Hamburg, Connecticut to Falcon Heights, Minnesota—1,345 miles, minus the mile to and from the highway and our overnight hotel. Total drive time: 21.5 hours inside total elapsed time of 45 hours. Such …
AUGUST 3, 2020 – (Cont.) There stood the “insane man”—with crazed face, wielding Excalibur and wearing a green tunic and leotards, stretched to the max by excess, middle-age weight. Except he wasn’t exactly “wielding” the sword: his hand and arm merely shook in fear. And the tall-standing feather in his Robin Hood cap trembled in …
AUGUST 2, 2020 – Across the road from our Lyme Light—our family’s place on Hamburg Cove in Lyme, Connecticut, lies Camp Claire, which has been there forever. Well, maybe not forever, but you know what I mean. It had been around for ages before our mother was a Camp Claire camper in the 1930s. During …
AUGUST 1, 2020 – Yesterday morning brought to Hamburg Cove my oldest sister, from Boston, and my youngest sister, from New York—each exactly a two-hour drive away. For the rest of the day, we enjoyed together this Eden midway between two major metropolitan centers of the country and a short boat trip to the Sound, …
JULY 31, 2020 – While chaos filled yesterday’s headlines, my wife, our daughter-in-law, and I found refuge inside paradise within Eden—Old Lyme, Connecticut. (Our son was back at the cove, working remotely as if on-site in Midtown Manhattan, pre-Covid.) Our excursion was arranged by Mylène, our son’s lovely wife, a dual citizen of France and …
JULY 30, 2020 – Two years ago on a flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to LaGuardia, I sat next to a guy from the extreme northwest corner of Minnesota. In the course of trip, I learned that he loved to hunt, hated wolves, loved dogs, hated the city, loved the country. The recent death of his …
JULY 29, 2020 – He died long before our time, but my sisters and I knew very well, people who knew him very well. He was “George B. Holman,” our maternal great-grandfather. His entrepreneurial sweat and equity were in Rutherford, New Jersey, but his rest and recreation were in Lyme, Connecticut. Among his hobbies: gardening …
JULY 27, 2020 – Yesterday, I had to take care of some business at the Lyme Town Hall. Mistaking “Public Hall” for “Town Hall,” I thought I’d walk from Lyme Light, then around the corner and down Cove Road to the hamlet of Hamburg—population 23, plus the modest yacht club, Reynold’s general store, the Congregational …
JULY 26, 2020 – I’ve always found refuge in beauty—redwoods; mountains; seashore; sunrises, sunsets; starry nights by Heaven; Starry Night by Van Gogh; birdsong in spring and Beethoven’s Spring Sonata. But I also mean “small” beauty—delectable nourishment arranged artistically upon my dinner platter; translucent tail feathers of a bluejay flying across the yard into the …
JULY 25, 2020 – My mother traced her roots to England—“Olde” and “New.” Landing in 1621, her forebears were among the earliest colonizers of this land. They grew deep roots in the place where I now sit—Lyme, Connecticut. My exact location is the front verandah of “The Escape Hatch,” later renamed “Lyme Light” by two …