Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
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 …
FEBRUARY 2, 2026 – On July 6, 2016 Philando Castile was shot and killed by a policeman during a routine traffic stop here in Minnesota. The shooting occurred less than half a mile from our quiet, leafy, liberal—and by way of our complacency, racist—town of Falcon Heights (pop. 5,200). Within a single news cycle, news …
JANUARY 28, 2026 – Last Sunday, in addressing abuses by ICE agents in Minnesota, Governor Walz compared ICE agents’ treatment of children in Minnesota to the experience of Ann Frank. His exact words: We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story …
JANUARY 20, 2026 – To get my mind off Trump’s War of Retribution and his insane designs on Greenland, not to mention the business in Venezuela (what’s going on there now?) and the DOJ’s suppression of the Epstein Files (remember those?), I check regularly the week’s weather forecast: Friday’s high of MINUS 14F. The reminder …
JANUARY 18, 2026 – Yesterday evening, we joined our friends Ann and Ravi at nearby Bolé, a gourmet Ethiopian restaurant. Parking was so bad that after letting Beth off at the entrance, I had to drive nearly halfway home to find a spot. The walk from the car back to the restaurant took time, given …
JANUARY 17, 2026 – If I asked you to identify the “most dangerous man in America—ever,” whom would you name? My choice would be five-star General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific Area (his official title during WW II). No dummy, MacArthur graduated first in his class from West Point, though one could …
JANUARY 15, 2026 – I’ve said before in a post what bears repeating: “By its very nature, the beast of war brings out the very worst and the very best of humanity.” This evening I watched yet another (superb) Norwegian film (see last Monday’s post)—Into the White—that captures this axiom about as well as any …
JANUARY 11, 2026 – Thursday evening I hosted a rump session of my book club. (Two of our five members were MIA, which might have been a referendum on the host’s book selection, The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester (See my 8/20/25 post – https://writemakesmight.net/ub-and-the-man-who-loved-china/ ). As is so often the case with …
JANUARY 8, 2026 – When many of us pull one eye away from our newsfeeds, we ask, “How in the world did we get here?” The question is especially freighted with special urgency in the wake of recent ICE actions here in Minnesota. One response I’ve heard (from white libs, mostly) is, “It all started …
DECEMBER 23, 2025 – The regular reader knows by now that I’m a compulsive student of history. Just as some folks are obsessed with NFL football or college basketball (or as I used to be, with major league baseball), I’m zeroed in on “what happened and why” in previous chapters of civilization. What is the …
DECEMBER 17, 2025 – I know it’s a mouthful—“MacArthurMAGAburger”—but a mere taste of it can provide sufficient perspective to work as an effective antacid. What am I talking about? The life and times of General Douglas MacArthur, nemesis of President Truman (and democracy), yet the MAGA darling of a bygone era. Much can be said …