Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
APRIL 28, 2025 – Nothing takes your mind off other worries as completely as the weather can. Got work-related problems? Family problems? Upset with the wholesale unraveling of the United States of America? Go chase extreme weather—or let it come to you. Here I am at the Red Cabin again, this time with my good …
APRIL 22, 2025 – I remember the first Earth Day—this day in 1970. I was in my sophomore year of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, parked in the wilds of the northwest part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, 15 miles south of Traverse City. Across the highway that ran past the entrance to our campus …
APRIL 17, 2025 – This morning I woke at 6:35 and looked out the second floor bedroom windows to see what the weather was doing outside the Red Cabin. To my shock and dismay, I saw a gigantic ice floe pushing along our shoreline. Stepping on hot coals could not have spurred a quicker reaction …
APRIL 15, 2025 – This morning when I woke to another day, I checked on the world beyond my immediate horizons. I was soon reminded that our country is looking like a dirigible engulfed in flames and fast losing altitude. Whether it turns into a bomb or swan remains to be seen, though the swan …
APRIL 13, 2025 – I harbor the hope that the reader who is about my age or beyond it will understand the sentiments expressed below. If you are my junior, the likelihood exists that at best you’ll lay my two cents aside for possible future reference. If you’re in the latter camp, I wholly understand: …
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 8, 2025 – With the tilt of the North Pole moving toward the spring equinox and daytime temps rising into the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit, last Tuesday’s snow is not long for this world. Given the online ski report I read last night, I decided to race up to the Red Cabin this morning …
MARCH 6, 2025 – Today I left the Big City and winged my way over the Big Storm back to Big Lake Country. Yesterday evening I’d developed mild apprehension when reading the blizzard warning that NOAA (“Go, NOAA!”) for Minnesota overnight and into today: heavy snow, low visibility, and 40 mph winds with gusts up …
MARCH 3, 2025 – Today with my sister as a guide, I took another long walking tour of Central Park, winding up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There we spent over an hour viewing the special exhibit of works by Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic landscapist. Given the Romantic inspiration derived from nature, …
FEBRUARY 27, 2025 – No, I did not inadvertently omit “Society” from “The New York Historical.” It was The New York Historical Society that ripped “Society” away. While a big chunk of the country has gone bonkers over DEI, back here in New York, where I write this, hyper-libs have intercepted the DEI ball and …
FEBRUARY 4, 2025 – This morning, I allowed a breach of discipline to get the better of me: I read/listened to more of the latest news about President Musk than was good for my blood pressure. I’d already been stewing over reports from direct witnesses—a family member and a close friend—that the all-out assault on …
FEBRUARY 3, 2025 – The best antidote to news of more nonsense is to spend the weekend up at the cabin with your nine-year-old granddaughter. For one thing, you find yourself looking at our world—and the worlds above it—through a fresh lens. Take for example, my first glance up at the sky after we’d pulled …
DECEMBER 25, 2024 – Before the end of Christmas and the beginning of Hanukkah, we packed the car, mostly with food, and headed up to the Red Cabin for a few days in the north woods. It was my first trip up here since the last of the autumn foliage had fallen. Now the land …
NOVEMBER 18, 2024 – Blogger’s note: At the end of my post on October 9, 2019, the second part of a story about a trip to the ER up at the lake, I wrote, In the lobby, my wife was chatting away with three guys in camouflage. These cheerful musketeers were awaiting care of their …
NOVEMBER 17, 2024 – Last night before sailing off to Nod, I read more of Ian Frazier’s latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough. I highly recommend it. Currently, I’m reading all about the Bronx in the opening stages of the Revolutionary War. Of course, it’s all about the …
NOVEMBER 16, 2024 – Today was another glorious day in the “tree garden,” where I took full advantage of the unseasonably fair weather and blasted well beyond my goal of “bud-capping” 500 trees. As of nightfall, the count was closer to 600, though a far cry from my record of 1,000 two years ago, but …
NOVEMBER 11, 2024 – Today the world rotated yet again and made all of us a day older. In my own little corner of the globe I experienced enough to fill at least two episodes of the current season of my imaginary Netflix series. Otherwise put . . . to capture for posterity the details …
NOVEMBER 6, 2024 – Early this morning before the rest of the household was up, I quietly went downstairs, fixed myself my usual breakfast, then slipped out of the house and out of town. The election results had taken their emotional toll on us all, and for the sake of everyone’s blood pressure, I wanted …
OCTOBER 21, 2024 – This morning in these parts, the sun peeked above the distant eastern shore of the lake at precisely 7:32. A good 20 minutes before, I’d slipped the kayak into the water and paddled quietly, effortlessly along our shoreline. I still felt like a free-floating spirit in a dream, gliding magically past …
OCTOBER 17, 2024 – “Garden of Eden” is how I think of the 20-acre (or so) tree garden within the larger woods of Björnholm along the northwest shore of Grindstone Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. Perhaps I get carried away by the peak foliage and gorgeous weather that has prevailed since I arrived here Tuesday afternoon. …
OCTOBER 15, 2024 – “Dear Diary, In many ways today brought a typical mixture of ebb and flow; tension and resolution; yin and yan. What was different about it all was my awareness, my perception of opposing forces coming together to provide a modicum of peace through balance. I started off in conflict—talking litigation strategy …
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 …
OCTOBER 5, 2024 – We awoke this morning to a wild and wooly day—in the wind department, anyway. The sun was emerging through light, unorganized cotton candy clouds, and the outdoor thermometer registered a balmy 56F, but the wind? It howled like an over-eager parent at a high school soccer match—not with mean-spirited shouting but …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2024 – This morning the air outside was as still as it was inside the Red Cabin. Overnight the temperature had dropped into the 40s, and in the hour after daybreak, the mercury hadn’t yet climbed above 48. I donned appropriate clothing and slipped out for a walk along the shoreline path to …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 – Today the early weather was splendiferous. I decided to get an early start for the Red Cabin and spend the day doing trail work in the “tree garden” before Beth joins me tomorrow to enjoy a stretch of fine days, so says the forecast. Just as I pressed the ignition button …