Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
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 …
JULY 14, 2024 – Today I finished reading The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes, a British scholar with serious academic chops and credentials. He’s written no fewer than nine books on Russian and European history, which have been translated into 30 languages. Yet, as is so often the case among academics, Figes has his …
JULY 9, 2024 – I concluded yesterday’s technology episode on a positive note—specifically, the likely prospect that I could jawbone the manager of the MOA Apple Store to reimbursement me for the hefty cost of data recovery. Once I’d cinched that deal, I figured I’d ship the device straight away to the data salvage outfit. …
JUNE 28, 2024 – Here’s my take on yesterday evening’s train wreck in Atlanta: the debate produced a rare and magical freeze-framed moment in the annals of American presidential campaign history. Far from being an actual “total disaster,” it’s a juncture where Democrats, Republicans, and all stripes of political independents are in total agreement. The …
JUNE 24, 2024 – I’m now deep into the book I mentioned in my June 19 post—The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes. The author’s thesis is that much about Russia of today is from the mold of myth; that Putin’s justification for the assault on Ukraine, as well as his domestic autocracy are rooted …
JUNE 20, 2024 – This afternoon we spent 90 minutes aboard a time machine, and though we never left the present, we experienced the past—over 410 years in the past, to be precise. The excitement was aboard the Onrust, a replica of the old Dutch sailing vessel built in 1613-14 by Adrien Block, a lawyer-turned-merchant-fortune …
JUNE 18, 2024 – Today we drove from Lyme to New Haven. Our destination was Yale University, or more specifically, the Yale University Art Gallery. I’d driven and ridden the route numerous times, but this was the first occasion when I was especially conscious of the names along the way—Clinton, Leetes, Trumbull, Stewart R. McKinney, …