Category: Humor

(MORE) CHRISTMAS GIFTS

DECEMBER 19, 2024 – If you hadn’t noticed, since December 4 my posts have embraced a Christmas theme in keeping with this festive season of the year which has evolved from its pagan roots to its Christian foundation to its steroidal commercial secularism and generic expression, “Happy Holiday!” With still six whole days remaining before …

HOW I SAVED MY SISTER FROM THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA

DECEMBER 16, 2024 – If you read last Saturday’s post, you know the TV situation in our house during my “growing up years.” Omitted was mention of notable exceptions: the quadrennial presidential nominating conventions, the Olympics and the first manned moon-landing. For these events, Dad rented a TV—from Joe’s Western Auto hardware store in downtown …

DAD’S CHRISTMAS TV MIRTH

DECEMBER 14, 2024 – For most of my growing-up years, our family lived without a television. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision on the part of my parents or simply a “result by default” after the television that we did own had gone on the fritz. The default scenario alone is unlikely. …

LOTS OF NUTCRACKERS BUT NO CANDY CANES

DECEMBER 13, 2024 – Throughout her life, my oldest sister has been the consummate over-achiever. One manifestation of this attribute—and closely associated with Christmas—is that from the late 1970s to circa 2020, she performed in close to two thousand performances of The Nutcracker Ballet produced by the Boston Ballet Company. My second oldest sister, took …

THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT (AND AN EASTER ONE TOO!)

DECEMBER 11, 2024 – Anyone who belongs to a mainstream church or even one of the confounding number of offstream churches is familiar with the “pageantry” of the annual Christmas pageant. Back in my churchy days, I thought of these de rigueur features of Sunday school as three-set Venn diagrams. One circle, of course, represented …

A CHRISTMAS STORY RIGHT ON TARGET

DECEMBER 8, 2024 – Amidst telling stories mostly about Christmas past, I must take a break to recount a hilarious story about Christmas present. My wife was having a rough go at decorating the house. The first problem arose when our nine-year-old granddaughter decided to opt-out of the “festivities.” This choice was a let-down for …

TURKEY DAY MENU: GOOD FOOD AND GOOD LAUGHS

NOVEMBER 30, 2024 – The crowd at our Thanksgiving Day dinner table were in unanimous agreement that the turkey our younger son had prepared in his Traeger smoker was probably the best ever served. The stories—told by the guests—were nearly as funny as the turkey was tasty and juicy. To protect the innocent and the …

HOW TO CURE PANIC ATTACKS

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024 – Blogger’s Note: I skipped posting yesterday because I was preoccupied or more precisely, anesthetized, while medical personnel jabbed a foot-long (I might be exaggerating that by a couple of inches) needle into the left side of my pelvis to draw bone marrow samples in a “routine” annual exercise to monitor the presence …

FUNNY BUSINESS

JULY 18, 2024 – My namesake niece, Erica Rhodes, has achieved fame—if not yet a fortune (I’m still waiting for her to buy us a mansion)—as a standout standup comedienne. Based in L.A., she appears at comedy clubs all over the country[1] and never fails to draw an enthusiastic crowd and hearty applause. This evening …

CAT, YOU BETTER COME BACK ON STAGE

JULY 13, 2024 – Yesterday evening, my wife and I along with other family members were among the sardines who packed ourselves into the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul for the first of three 50th Anniversary shows of A Prairie Home Companion. If the marathon performance encroached on the bedtime of many a fan …

A ROTTEN APPLE

JULY 10, 2024 – If you read my immediately preceding post, you know that at yesterday’s close, I was in a celebratory mood. Despite Sisyphean odds, I’d managed to drag my MacBook Pro up a steep hill of technological glitches all the way to the summit of technological fixes. From that vantage point, the seemingly …

TURNING A LEMON INTO LEMONADE

JULY 8, 2024 – Among the innumerable micro-adventures of modern life is the smartphone, laptop or kindred device that up and dies—which is an odd idiom, since what thing, animate or inanimate, goes “up” then dies? I can think of things that either go down and die or die in place, but I’ve never heard …

DUCHAMP’S SHOVEL

JULY 1, 2024 – Recently, several members of my family got embroiled in an argument over “concept art” and whether it’s truly art. The heated discussion began over one of the participant’s recent trip to the Yale University Art Gallery. The specific item that engendered debate was a shovel; an ordinary snow shovel purchased in …

NATURE’S SENSE OF HUMOR

JUNE 29, 2024 – This weekend my wife and I are preparing the Red Cabin and yard for a boatload of company next weekend. Our goal for the grounds is modest, however: when our guests pull up after their journey’s last leg—a long, winding, two-track dirt drive through a veritable jungle—we don’t want them to …

“NOWHERESVILLE IN THE STATE OF EVERYWHERE”

JUNE 26, 2024 – It seems that whenever we get together with friends, we wind up trading recommendations for series on streaming services. “Have you seen ______________?” someone will ask, opening the trading session. “No, but I’ve heard it’s really good,” says someone else. “Is it on Netflix?” “Hulu.” “We’re into season three of ______________,” …

IN THE CATSKILLS I CAME OUT OF MY SARTORIAL CAVE

APRIL 29, 2024 – Recently, five of us from our clan attended a wedding and reception just outside of the little ski resort town of Windham in the Catskills. The bride was the daughter of the legendary “Cliff” from my Inheritance series posted last summer right here on this blogsite. For me wedding was a …

ECLIPSED

APRIL 8, 2024 – Blogger’s note: In light (“In the darkness”?) of today’s event, this post interrupts my current series, The Neighbors. That series resumes tomorrow with a particularly amusing installment. Stay tuned. Did you hear about today’s solar eclipse across a broad swath of the United States? You didn’t? Well, I’m glad that at …

THE MIRACULOUS

MARCH 28, 2024 – Trust me. I’m only half as crazy as I appear to be. But I must confess, I thoroughly enjoy the level of insanity that I’ve been able to maintain throughout most of my life—thus far. Despite my strivings to go all the way over the edge, I’ve long accepted that life …

ANOTHER “AT BAT”

JANUARY 23, 2024 – By sheer will I came to terms with the undeniable fact that what I’d wanted to believe was the bat was nothing more than a black sock. Meanwhile, Beth called me from back home, safe from nature. Nonetheless, she is our veteran cabin mouse killer and bat battler. Some eight years …

BAT-TLING NATURE

JANUARY 22, 2024 – In our part of the country, a family tradition is owning a lake cabin (Minnesota) or cottage (Wisconsin) “up north.” It’s where we urban folk can fish, swim, marvel at sunsets, watch the stars come out, and roast marshmallows for s’mores. It’s where we commune with nature and, ironically, where we …

CHRISTMAS DETAILS

DECEMBER 26, 2023 – In the context of a musical performance, my dad used to say that greatness lay in the details—not any single detail, he noted, but in the aggregate effect of all the details. “Therefore,” he said, “as a performer you have to get all the details right.” Dad’s musical refinement came as …