Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JULY 31, 2024 – (Cont.) Back home other Nisei were exerting a different kind of courage in quite a different sort of combat. One of the leading “soldiers” in this regard was a conscientious objector by the name of Gordon Hirabayashi, who worked tirelessly in the pursuit of justice. A Ghandi-like character, he exercised unusual …
JULY 30, 2024 – (Cont.) The most remarkable aspect of racial discrimination against Japanese-Americans is that it didn’t discourage most Nisei (people of Japanese parentage but born in the United States) from joining the war effort. They signed up because they felt it was their duty—as Americans and in defense of American ideals and principles—and …
JULY 28, 2024 – (Cont.) Every so often you read a book that changes who you are; I mean alters the way you look at the world and in a manner that you can’t forget or “undo.” For me the biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Taylor Branch was one such book—or rather, “books,” …
JULY 17, 2024 – For the Fourth of July our neighbor John was kind enough to accommodate some of our guests by opening up one of the seldom-used cabins on his compound, which borders our land on the other side of the “swamp woods.” In one of the bedrooms was a chalkboard on which someone …
JUNE 6, 2024 – For years the Soviet view of the D-Day invasion was inversely proportionate to the American obsession with commemoration of that historic day. Stalin had long been pressing Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front in Western Europe to draw Germans away from the Eastern Front, where the Nazis had been …
JUNE 2, 2024 – In ancient times I was involved in a case concerning a prominent piece of real estate in downtown St. Paul[1]. For years the matter consumed a plurality, sometimes a majority, of my billable hours at the firm. Other lawyers with the pertinent client relationship that predated my hiring had reeled the …
MAY 23, 2024 – (Cont.) Menard’s, Lowe’s, and Home Depot have become emporia selling everything a person needs to build a house and fill it wall-to-wall from the basement floor to the attic rafters, with all the props and fittings known to the Great American consumer. And every single item that fills one of these …
MAY 22, 2024 – These days you have to ask yourself—what is America? A crazy place? A terribly bad place? A wonderfully good place? A country about to push itself over the edge of a precipice? The most resilient nation on earth, still destined to be . . . dare I say it . . …
DECEMBER 8, 2023 – After school yesterday, Beth picked up Illiana from school and ferried her back to our house to play for a while before swimming class at 5:00. I was disappointed I couldn’t join in fun around the house, but I was in the middle of a three-hour Zoom conference. With my microphone …
JULY 4, 2023 – In commemoration of Independence Day, today’s post breaks from my individual “inheritance” to celebrate our collective American inheritance. But in the mix of dazzling fireworks, condiment-loaded hot dogs, and liberal servings of potato salad, we should take a sober and sobering account of that inheritance. In my early school years, American …