Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JULY 9, 2026 – (Cont.) The reasons I say The Oppermanns is “a book for our times,” are chilling against the backdrop of what we’re now witnessing in America. I don’t suggest by this that one epoch is identical to another. History doesn’t “repeat itself” as an exercise in klecksography. No inkblot on the page …
JULY 7, 2026 – (Cont.) As mentioned above, the Oppermanns are a family of achievers, whose inspiration was their paternal grandfather, a successful furniture manufacturer and retailer in Berlin, whose modest straightforward company motto was, “Oppermann customers buy good goods cheaply.” He’d gotten his start as a supplier of goods to the German armies during …
JULY 6, 2026 – (Cont.) As is the case with most great art and literature, The Oppermanns is art reflecting life—specifically, a critical phase of the life of the author, Lion Feuchtwanger. Much of what shapes the outlook of Gustav Oppermann, a central character in the book, the artistic mirror, is the writer reflecting on …
JULY 5, 2026 – Today I completed my reading of The Oppermanns, a masterfully conceived and crafted novel by the inimitable German-Jewish novelist and playwright, Lion Feuchtwanger (1884 – 1958). It was one of those books that leaves one breathless—and knowing that the work deserves to be reread, and more deeply analyzed, with the likely …
JULY 4, 2026 – To be honest, for me, the Bicentennial was a much bigger deal than the Semiquincentennial.[1] This inverted perspective is counter-intuitive: after all, “a quarter of a millennium” (or “half of half a millennium”) is much grander-sounding than “two centuries.” If celebration at the 200-year mark years warranted a few extra “bombs …
JUNE 27, 2026 – This morning I shot off an order for a couple of new books—The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies by Susan Stokes, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen, a …
JUNE 26, 2026 – The most famous opening line in British literature is, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, …
JUNE 25, 2026 – (Cont.) Our son Byron deserves special credit for having placed the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum on our expedition’s itinerary. It’s not a destination I would’ve included—though not because of any negative bias or lack of interest. Byron himself had never expressed a particular interest in JFK or his legacy, …
JUNE 24, 2026 – (Cont.) The historical capstone to our Beantown expedition was an all too short morning-long visit to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the UMass campus along the Charles River. Since the library and museum opened the year after I graduated from college, I excused myself for never having …
JUNE 23, 2026 – (Cont.) Despite all the time I spent in Boston during my undergraduate days and on my many visits thereafter, I’d never walked the Freedom Trail. It was the brainchild of William Schofield, a columnist for the Boston Herald. He proposed it in a column in March 1951, and just three months …
MAY 24, 2026 – My parents, bless their souls, were philhellenes and to a lesser extent, Romanophiles—lesser because as I remember my dad explaining when I was quite young, for the most part, the Ancient Romans were “copycats,” the Ancient Greeks having been the source of so much that later evolved in the hands and …
MAY 14, 2026 – The other night I stayed up way past my usual bedtime to watch to completion the Netflix movie, Nuremberg, based on Jack El-Hai’s book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Görning, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WW II. The movie stars Russell …
APRIL 25, 2026 – If for no reason but to keep tally of the latest assaults on American interests by . . . the American presidency in league with House and Senate enablers . . . today I’d intended to write about those offenses. Random material, however, disrupted my plan unexpectedly. The diversion occurred as …
APRIL 16, 2026 – Whenever my wife and I get together with friends, conversation invariably touches three bases: 1. Health reports; 2. Shared political angst; and 3. Latest streaming favs. Oh yeah, and occasionally, as in always, we’ll talk kids and grandkids. Generally, I try to tune out the health reports, keeping my own to …
APRIL 14, 2026 – (Cont.) In many ways, the movie is a celluloid wonder. It had three directors, featured a real live buffalo stampede filmed in Custer State Park, South Dakota and attracted a long roster of the day’s stars: Jimmy Stuart, Peter Fonda, Debbie Reynolds, Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, Richard Widmar, George Peppard, Thelma …
APRIL 13, 2026 – By the time I entered third grade, I was already deep into cowboy and Indian territory—as was the typical white kid view of the Wild West, given the cultural biases that surrounded us back in the early 1960s. This interest arose not from TV shows such as Gunsmoke or The Rifleman, …
APRIL 1, 2026 – With the title of today’s post, I’ve taken obvious liberties with the famous expression, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” I’d intended to add to the unrelenting Democratic outrage and confounding Republican sycophancy over the Emperor’s obsession with Sharpie pens, The Ballroom, and Florsheim shoes while the black smoke from his impulsivity …
MARCH 30, 2026 – Participation in Saturday’s flagship “No Kings!” rally in St. Paul bolstered my faith in humanity—at least the local on-site version of it, where I could rub elbows with fellow Minnesotans who’d endured the most severe winter in collective memory, and I’m not referencing the weather. Today, however, when I read a …
MARCH 15, 2026 – Somewhere along the line of my secondary education John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima was required reading. As our nation’s foolhardy leader drags us into yet another war, Hersey’s account of six survivors of the blast that was “brighter than a thousand suns” should again be required reading. The “book” was an article …
MARCH 2, 2026 – Today I experienced a further lesson in the difficulty of reconciling my circumstances with our country’s ugly past. In this particular instance, I have in mind the treatment of Indigenous populations by the European settlers, colonizers, fortune-seekers, and religious zealots who preceded us, not to mention by us, as well, with …
MARCH 1, 2026 – By all appearances, we’re well into the post-democracy phase of American history. On the surface, this can be quite discomforting, especially for us who’ve been convinced that the sky has been falling since January 20 of last year. But from a broader perspective, the current crisis, if you will, is not …
FEBRUARY 10, 2026 – Blogger’s note: Because the server was down for upgrades late yesterday, publication of this post was delayed. Nearly nine years ago, Don Lewis, a pillar of the local legal community and with whom I’d worked long and hard on a project, invited me to lunch at the Atlas near our office …
FEBRUARY 6, 2026 – This morning I addressed one of the two certainties in life—the one that starts with “T”. One thing led to another, however, and soon I was off on numerous financial tangents. Two of these required busting through online security barriers. I’ve grown quite accustomed to these, but in the cases at …
FEBRUARY 4, 2026 – (Cont.) The fight over the civil rights plank of the Democratic platform at the 1948 convention was the capstone of Into the Bright Sunshine. The rest of this riveting book was divided into three parts: a detailed account of the shocking level of racism against the relatively small Black population of …
FEBRUARY 3, 2026 – (Cont.) The dramatic conclusion of Into the Bright Sunshine features the clash between advocates of civil rights and protectors of states’ rights at the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. In that era, party platforms carried far more weight than they do today, and the intra-party fight over the civil rights plank …