Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 5, 2025 – Over supper this evening back home, my wife and I watched some cable TV news. Big mistake. Giving us a bad case of indigestion were Trump’s weekend speech touting a trillion-dollar military budget and Hegseth’s “warrior talk” about using the military against American civilians in blue cities. These reports were chased …
SEPTEMBER 3, 2025 – At the lake the other evening we had a clear view of the waxing gibbous moon. Our vantage point was the end of our dock, facing south over the water. The Moon occupied center stage in the darkening sky, and we watched in awe its brilliant performance. Of course, we’d attended …
AUGUST 11, 2025 – Yesterday our grandson turned two. The occasion was celebrated by a crowd of well-wishers around the long table on the porch of the Red Cabin. He is of the fifth generation of Nilssons to enjoy the beauty of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin. Everyone showered him with smiles and attention as …
MAY 26, 2025 – Visiting us for several days at the Red Cabin are two of my wife’s cousins—Brian and Eric. Brian I keep calling “Byron” by mistake, and half the time when someone shouts, “Hey, Eric!” I think I’m being hailed, but as it turns out, I seem to be wrong 100% of the …
MARCH 29, 2025 – There I was, just minding my own business, when “ding!”—the familiar sound emitted by my iPhone announced the arrival of another email, albeit one in my “focused” folder, meaning one that I shouldn’t ignore. It was from my good friend Mike, whose signature trait is intellectual curiosity. He’d recently caught a …
MARCH 17, 2025 – What a difference a day makes. A day; one full rotation of planet Earth, as it revolves around a star, which, in turn, with its eight captive orbs whirls around inside an arm of the galaxy, which itself is soaring through space too vast for our imaginations to grasp. But I’m …
MARCH 2, 2025 – Today I struggled to maintain good cheer, even a sense of humor, in the reverberatory wake of Friday’s devastating scene in the Oval Office. At regular intervals I received messages today from European friends/relatives expressing a combination of fear, anger, and dismay over our country’s open lurch into Putin’s clutches. To …
OCTOBER 6, 2024 – Maybe it’s an “age thing” or perhaps its my surroundings or both; in any case, today I found myself in orbit around my own little world, as it were, and the view triggered myriad emotional and cognitive responses in a combination I had not experienced before. Physically speaking, I was well …
JULY 26, 2024 – Late yesterday—or rather, very early today; the hour was closing in on 1:00 a.m.—I was about to retire when the sound of the breeze off the lake drew me outside. Usually the wind abates with the approach of dusk, but the broad stationary front over this region has brought a deliciously …
MAY 28, 2024 – What delights Beth (a former teacher) and me (a former student, who by and large enjoyed school) is that our second-grade granddaughter likes school so much, one of her favorite after-school activities is . . . playing school. Half the fun for all of us is the set-up. Emulating what she …
MAY 5, 2024 – Recently I tried to imagine the experience of a 10- to 15-minute stroll on the surface of Mercury, our solar system’s inner-most planet. My “what if” thought was inspired by what Dava Sobel has so to say about it in her acclaimed book, The Planets. The key features of the speedy …
DECEMBER 6, 2022 – Sometimes little things make big impacts. In the case of books, Mao’s Little Red Book, held high by 100s of millions of Chinese, created a Great Red Wave. Another small book with a big effect is Planets, part of the collection of A Golden Guide shirt-pocket-size books. The little gem bears …