Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
FEBRUARY 20, 2025 – (Cont.) After the time machine had rocketed back to the present, I looked up from Dad’s letter and squinted at the view framed by the window panes—sun and snow blinding me to the extreme cold outside. After my eyes adjusted, I noticed the royal blue sky, which reminded me of the …
FEBRUARY 10, 2025 – (Cont.) In a nutshell, Zinn’s thesis of American history is that its essence and inevitable outcome turn on a tight combination of three inescapable determinants: (a) Whiteness, (b) male dominance, and (c) property ownership. Of course, there are layers to each of these elements and a host of influences beyond them, …
FEBRUARY 9, 2025 – (Cont.) First, let’s take those first 150 pages of the 680-page history tome. The book is A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I’m positive that several of my readers have read all 680 pages of it; that additional readers know of the book and are generally familiar …
FEBRUARY 7, 2025 – The phrase “Government waste and inefficiency” was copyrighted by Republicans when their standard bearer, Ronald Reagan, arrived in Washington in January 1980. The most memorable line from his first inaugural speech was, “Government is not the solution to our problem. It is the problem.” In his popular wisdom, government was synonymous …
JANUARY 30, 2025 – (Cont.) After covering the “three levels of learning,” Professor Stavrou turned to the study of history generally. He emphasized that before you can assess what you’re reading on the history of most anything, you need to know the historian. Who is writing? What’s their background, their perspective, their springboard, their biases …
JANUARY 29, 2025 – (Cont.) If Professor Stavrou is the consummate inquisitive scholar, he is, I think a born educator in the loftiest sense of the term. He’s neither a pedant nor a pontificator but a man intensely dedicated to intellectual integrity and the joy of learning. Given his unusually lengthy career as both a …
JANUARY 28, 2025 – One day when I was a young kid, my sister Elsa came home from school reciting the name, Ponce de León, the explorer and conquistador who in 1513 led an expedition throughout what is now the state of Florida. Two hours later, Elsa remained enchanted by the name of the early …
JANUARY 19, 2025 – As the world prepares for the improbable second inauguration of a flam-flam artist[1] gone so apparently legit, he garnered a majority of the popular vote for president of—get this—the United States of America, land of the free, home of the brave, domain of the eagle, and once a beacon for “[the] …
JANUARY 18, 2025 – Recently, I watched a Netflix documentary about the mind-boggling effort to build, launch and deploy James Webb. Of course, I’m not referring to the second NASA administrator by that name but the largest telescope ever built (by earthlings) and named in honor of him. The documentary reminded me of what I’ve …
JANUARY 14, 2025 – Last Sunday my wife and I took our nine-year-old granddaughter to a play at the renowned Children’s Theater Company (CTC) adjacent to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While we wandered around the lobby waiting for the theater doors to open, I noticed the “Land Acknowledgment” posted off to the side. It …
JANUARY 10, 2025 – Lately, each morning while I consume my porridge,[1] I pore over a coffee-table-size book bearing the expansive title, History of the World Map by Map. It’s as much an historical atlas as it is a sweeping narrative of epochs and empires, movements and migrations that have shaped the world of homo …
JANUARY 4, 2025 – (Cont.) Trotsky and his family arrived in the Bronx just as real estate development—mostly in the form of eminently affordable apartment buildings—was taking off. Thanks to extensions of cheap and easy public transportation from Manhattan, many residents of the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side who were employed in the …
JANUARY 3, 2025 – This morning I sent a New Year’s greeting to a close Czech friend of ours and life-long resident of Prague. He’s a heart surgeon by profession, but he could achieve worldwide fame if he converted his principal avocation, photography, into his primary vocation. In my applause responding to his latest round …
DECEMBER 28, 2024 – Late yesterday evening I stumbled across an extraordinary film, which I highly recommend to my readers. First are four things to know about it: FIRST: It’s among the sub-genre of World War II movies that doesn’t depict weapons of war (e.g. The Edge of War; The Wannsee Conference (see 12/26/22 post); …
DECEMBER 27, 2024 – This evening I finished watching Darkest Hour, directed by Joe Wright and featuring Gary Oldman in the role of Winston Churchill. Oldman won an Oscar for Best Actor for his extraordinary performance in this historical drama. I’d read quite a lot about Churchill—his harrowing experiences as a soldier and war correspondent …
DECEMBER 26, 2024 – ‘’Tis the season for the Middle East: the star over the manger in Bethlehem, in the case of Christians; the Maccabean Revolt, capture of Jerusalem and cleansing of the Second Temple and the miracle of the oil (think: lights of the menorah), in the case of Judaism. Unfortunately, every season “’tis …
OCTOBER 29, 2024 – After watching/listening to vice president’s uplifting campaign speech this evening, I was schooled by our older son, who also heard Harris’s rallying cry. Cory himself is not voting for Trump, but he understands why a lot of men—regardless of race—are Trump supporters. I realized that if I wanted to understand better, …
OCTOBER 25, 2024 – When driving to the Red Cabin and reaching the point some 40 miles from my destination, I typically tune the radio to WOJB 88.9 FM, the public radio station broadcasting from the heart of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation. It’s a quirky little public radio station featuring an eclectic range of …
OCTOBER 14, 2024 – Each of us might well say that by a certain age, we’re “concerned about the current direction of the country.” The more you see and experience of this land of ours—the third most populous in the world—the more chronic dysfunctionality you’ll notice. Because of this, we’re naturally likely to conclude that …
OCTOBER 13, 2024 – Every good war movie—or just to be clear, “every war movie that’s a good movie”—winds up being an anti-war movie. Even a good movie about the “Good War” (WW II) is a reminder of the insanity and futility of war. By that I don’t mean that war is nugatory for the …
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 29, 2024 – (Cont.) Ever since we invented ourselves, we humans have in the business of exploiting other humans. Every culture, nation, and people, it seems, has had a go at it. In the last decades of the 19th century, landowners in Hawai’i were breaking the backs of plantation laborers to bring in the …
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 27, 2024 – We’re still at our Shangri-La on the shores of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin, and if you’ve followed my posts over the past few days, weeks, months, and now years, you know my attachment to this place. While I’m here I’m far more attuned to the dynamic beauty of our surroundings …