Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 20, 2026 – I didn’t forget. Early this morning when I first saw today’s date, I immediately thought of Dad. If he hadn’t died 16 years ago earlier this month, he would’ve turned 104 today. My three sisters, independently of one another and of me, were also thinking about Dad today. Later this morning …
MARCH 22, 2026 – As my serial readers know, yesterday’s post involved a brief trip aboard my personal time machine. I assure my younger readers—I’m blessed to have some—that as you travel deeper into old age, your time machine logs miles . . . er, light years . . . at an increasing rate even …
MAY 20, 2025 – Had our dear old dad lived to be even older than he was when the curtains closed at 10 days shy of 88 years; if he’d escaped the multiple myeloma that killed him and he’d dodged any number of other potentially terminal events, he would’ve turned 103 today. An early morning …
SEPTEMBER 5, 2021 – Whenever I hike to the old family cabin, I think about our grandparents, Ragnar and Hilda Nilsson. “Ga,” as we called our grandmother, and Grandpa followed long-established cabin rituals, which fascinated us impressionable kids. Ga came from Småland, a southern province of Sweden. She’d grown up on a farm and attended …
AUGUST 9, 2021 – My three sisters gathered in Lyme, CT over the weekend. What drew them here was the 75th annual meeting of the Huntley National Association. I attended vicariously thanks to my sisters’ vivid descriptions. Back in time, our grandfather, whose mother was a Huntley, was very active in the association. He paid …
MAY 30, 2021 – When he was old, my Grandpa Holman liked to joke about his age when someone stopped for idle chat. “Know how old I am?” he’d ask with hardly any lip or jaw movement. “No,” the person would say. “Neither do I . . .” Grandpa would respond, adding, “because my birthday …