Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 13, 2025 – Against the backdrop of the latest news stories, not to mention the many chronic conditions that plague our species, I feel a bit ridiculous writing about something as ordinary and unimportant as pockets; not air pockets or pockets of wealth or poverty or resistance but your basic pocket-pockets, as associated with …
JANUARY 8, 2025 – (Cont.) Under the mistaken assumption that life was good, I attempted to reconnect the main part of the Dyson with its long wand and floor brush roller. This action, however, ended nirvana abruptly: When I snapped the wand into its docking station on the combination handle/motor/filter/canister, the bottom of the canister …
JANUARY 7, 2025 – (Cont.) This unnerving development led me back to Google, this time with the critical search term, “video.” The top hit was a link to Tik Tok. I’d heard of Tik Tok, of course, but I’d never ventured forth. As a purist afflicted with a bad case of genetically-sourced OCD aversion to …
JANUARY 6, 2025 – (Cont.) Recently, my wife—whose portfolio includes Ministry of Household Procurements— purchased a new, cordless vacuum cleaner. It’s not a mere Dust Devil acquired at the bargain price of $39.99, down from $199.99, in response to a late-night television ad. No siree. It’s a high-end Dyson, a pricey machine recommended by our …
JANUARY 5, 2025 – I can’t speak for you in your world, but in mine I go around thinking I’m . . . adequately smart. For example, I know that the gas pedal is to the right of the brake pedal—even in Britain, India and other former members of the British Commonwealth, though I had …
JANUARY 1, 2025 – Quite apart from the opening weather forecast for this January (an inexorable descent into the deep freeze), a very positive aspect of turning the calendar from one year to the next is that yet again, a person gets to lay down a set of resolutions. This exercise is the most fundamental …
DECEMBER 20, 2024 – Yet again, my fingers—if not my brain—wanted to turn out a screed excoriating President Musk for having displaced the autocrat-elect as leader of United Plutocrats of America. But this still being the cheerful season of the year, I shifted gears to write something . . . well, cheerful. That was until …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
NOVEMBER 23, 2024 – The other day on my return from delivering Illiana to school, I was cruising west along Larpenteur Avenue toward the lefthand turn into our neighborhood about a mile down the pike. Right after I’d passed the Presbyterian Church and was abreast of the “+55 adult community,” I caught a glimpse of …
NOVEMBER 19, 2024 – Today, finally, I understood the people who voted for Trump. At least the faction who “couldn’t take it anymore” and voted to burn the place down. Except . . . in my case my wanting to trash the system wasn’t over the price of a gallon of milk or a carton …
NOVEMBER 11, 2024 – Today the world rotated yet again and made all of us a day older. In my own little corner of the globe I experienced enough to fill at least two episodes of the current season of my imaginary Netflix series. Otherwise put . . . to capture for posterity the details …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 ______________,” …