Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 7, 2022 – The imagination of an award-winning filmmaker couldn’t have anticipated yesterday’s centerpiece. The bone marrow biopsy procedure had been described to me previously, and I’d developed three strategies for the ordeal. Foremost was focus on the mountain of good will created by family and friends. Second was music—of my choosing, and I …
JANUARY 4, 2022 – Twelve days ago I was convicted of a capital crime in a foreign land. I’m innocent (I swear!), but from this verdict there’s no appeal—not in the province of multiple myeloma inside the People’s Democratic Republic of Cancer. Yesterday, after the pre-sentencing investigation, I stood before the “judge,” Dr. Bhaskar Kolla. …
DECEMBER 28, 2021 – Yesterday, I’d just pulled some old journals off my shelf, when friend/neighbor, “K.O.” Paulson stopped by to check on me. I’ve posted about him before—a smart, thoroughly amusing, tough-talking, literary savant/retired honors English teacher, and former baseball/basketball coach, who scouts locally for the Twins. I gave K.O. the current, unvarnished low-down—to …
DECEMBER 21, 2021 – I wish that I’d been more attentive, more “in tune,” as it were, with the humanitarian genius with whom I was breaking bread and sharing stories. I’m not much sure of the details, except that Yo-Yo Ma was in town performing with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and given my sister/brother-in-law’s …
NOVEMBER 18, 2021 – A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I published a novel, Severance Package, which I described oxymoronically as, “a satirical business thriller.” I gave it passing reference in a post several days ago. The book was the most serious case of vanity I’d ever attempted and manipulated to …
SEPTEMBER 26, 2021 – Little imagination is required to grasp the paradox of AI: machines ruling their makers. Of course, this condition existed long before Bill Gates invented the computer or Al Gore, the internet. Yet, while visiting our son Byron and his wife, Mylène, last month, my wife and I watched with amusement, the …
JULY 27, 2021 – Yesterday, I visited our good friends Jack and Linda in their Japanese garden—a national treasure. They themselves are a national treasure. (See 7/27/2019 post, “It is Zen.”) Two years later, the world has changed, but Jack and Linda’s Japanese garden still provides respite from that wild world. As we sat in …
MAY 29, 2021 – Yesterday I took our five-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter to nearby Como Park, where she ran free in the gracious sunshine. On our way to the frog pond, Illiana—in her princess dress—rolled down a grassy knoll. If my back had allowed, I would’ve joined her, as oblivious to attention as was she. We had, …
APRIL 23, 2021 – Yesterday evening, for the first time in over a year, we entered a house that was not our own. Stranger yet, we counted among six people—two of my three sisters, two brothers-in-law, my wife and I (all of us fully vaccinated). Each of us savored the occasion. We hadn’t been together …
MARCH 22, 2021 – One day when I was a little kid my sister Elsa told me how to spell Hungary. I’m not sure of the circumstances, but in her usual, authoritative way, she informed me that although the country name sounded like “hungry in the stomach,” it was spelled with an “a, as in …
DECEMBER 8, 2020 – For today’s post I’d composed another anti-Trump rant but then stumbled across something far more interesting: a fireplace stone. Yesterday evening I was reading my father’s book, My “Auto” Biography. To write about his life, he used the clever vehicle (as it were) of family automobile ownership. When I say “book,” …
OCTOBER 10, 2020 – The recent square-off between Pence and Harris wasn’t a “debate.” It was 90 minutes of non sequiturs and carefully rehearsed “talking points.” “It reminded me of the time that” . . . as a guest on a local Boston TV talk show, my oldest sister, a champion high school debater, told …
AUGUST 27, 2020 – Normally, my law practice doesn’t involve really bad behavior. In other words, I don’t practice family law or criminal defense law. My practice is mostly commercial real estate and business law. (Did I detect a yawn?) But one day along came a real estate case involving enough skullduggery to pinch over …
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 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 …
JULY 14, 2020 – I’m not talking here about delusions inside the Naked Emperor’s head, accepted or acquiesced in by his supporters and enablers. I’m thinking of books labeled and acknowledged as full-on fiction. Over decades, my desultory book-reading career has involved mostly non-fiction. “With so much to know about the non-fiction world,” I’d say, …
JULY 2, 2020 – (Cont.) They pulled up their canoe onto the small landing of the little island and unloaded their gear. While the kids pitched skippers across the smooth waters around the island, Grandpa and Uncle Sugar pulled the big umbrella tent out of its oilskin bag. They soon discovered, however, that the island …
JULY 1, 2020 – Many hardy, nature-loving Minnesotans make annual pilgrimages to the million-acre BWCA (“Boundary Waters Canoe Area”) along the Canadian border. I’m not among them—the pilgrims, that is. Instead, we make regular pilgrimages to our family’s lacustrian Shangri-La in northwestern Wisconsin, south of Lake Superior and well south of the BWCA. Before my …
JUNE 26, 2020 – I have four nieces who are stand-outs. One is also a stand-up—Erica Rhodes, comedienne-extraordinaire. Based in L.A., she’s performing this week—live and via Zoom—at the Acme Comedy Club in Minneapolis. In her routine she pokes fun at uncertainties about Covid-19, saying, “No one knows anything anymore!” Her comedic statement reminds me …
APRIL 5, 2020 – A week ago while out for a walk, my wife and I encountered our neighbor Kent, who was himself out for a walk–his good wife Joan, a 3M health specialist, was working hard from home. At a distance of a lot more than twice the recommended gap, we carried on a …
JANUARY 17, 2020 – Undaunted, he worked doggedly for admission into another Polish university, less selective than Jagiellonian University, but nonetheless, boasting a top-flight history department. He labored under the tutelage of a legendary scholar/professor, and then made a second attempt at Jagiellonian University. He passed. (In a “small world” aside, my wife and I …
JANUARY 16, 2020 – Recently I was asked to handle a business transaction involving a party with an H1b visa. Concerned about the effect the contemplated event might have on such a visa, I called my good friend Jurek, an immigration lawyer. A few years ago, our offices used to be on the same floor …
JANUARY 2, 2020 – Years ago my spouse gave me a nice sweatshirt with “BOWDOIN” printed on the front. To prevent it from looking like many of my other sweatshirts, which my wife threatens to toss, I rarely wear my college sweatshirt. On Tuesday, however, I had to go to my office briefly, then over …