Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JANUARY 21, 2025 – Now that yesterday’s nightmare is over, I can move on with my usual routines. Except . . . It turns out that I was merely dreaming that the nightmare was over. News of Trump’s first-day fiats hit like golf ball-sized hailstones. A blanket pardon of the J6 hooligans? We knew it …
JANUARY 20, 2025 – Unlike my spouse, who this morning was in an adjoining room from me, her eyes, ears and mind riveted to the HGTV channel, I was online watching a live stream of the inauguration. When I resurfaced from immersion in two hours of shock and awe, my wife refused to hear a …
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 17, 2025 – This morning I broke with routine, laying aside my History of the World Map by Map (See 1/10/25 post). For alternative entertainment, I flipped on the TV to Morning Joe to catch the latest cable opinions targeting an audience that already subscribes to those opinions. Instead of Joe Scarborough’s usual rants, …
JANUARY 16, 2025 – We who’ve been branded as “extremist, radical, leftist Democrats” (there being no other kind of Democrats, apparently), are accustomed to drawing parallels between Germany in the 1930s and America in the 2020s. These apt comparisons are supported and amplified by a broad cast of historians and political scientists who are intimately …
JANUARY 15, 2025 – I’m happy enough with my little stash of acorns—the exact location of which I know, unlike actual squirrels, who are notorious for amnesia—not to get too worked up about all the ways and means that the mega-wealthy in our society amass, stash and leverage their grand hoards of acorns. Academically speaking, …
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 …
DECEMBER 31, 2024 – In so many ways, personally and publicly, this year—2024—has been the year of the Yowzers, though every year has its fair share of Yowzers. On the personal front, the biggest Yowzer was our oldest son’s descent into the heart of darkness—and out again—in the heart health department. Nothing brings more intense …
DECEMBER 30, 2024 – President Jimmy Carter was such a nice guy, people said so long before he died at the ripe young age of 100. As people reflect on his exemplary life, I have a few memories of my own about him. The first was the mock Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention held at my …
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 21, 2024 – With the Christmas song, Do You Hear What I Hear? (and its first verse line, “Do you see what I see?”) ringing inside my head, I’m compelled to ask, Who in this country does not hear and see what’s happened to our precious democracy? Who does not hear, who does not …
DECEMBER 3, 2024 – Judging by the colored blonde hair with dark roots, the long pink sparkly false nails, the oversized ring, the expensive blanket cape, the high black shoes . . . the middle-aged woman across the aisle and one row up on the flight back to Minnesota was definitely not from my zip …
DECEMBER 2, 2024 – If you’re a Democrat the paper version of The Times these days will make you crazy. Musk, Patel, RFK, Jr., a former security guard-turned-county sheriff as director of the D.E.A.; sheriff, RFK, Jr., Patel, Musk . . . Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbards; Gabbards, Hegseth, Gaetz, in case you’ve forgotten about the roster …
NOVEMBER 29, 2024 – Perhaps the soundest investment advice I’ve ever encountered was in an article in the Business Section of a Saturday edition of The Times—years ago when a paper copy was tossed somewhere in our yard, bushes or front basement window wells (the delivery system deteriorated to the point where we were forced …
NOVEMBER 26, 2024 – Back on a suitably balmy early evening in October 2018, I ventured over to Target Center in downtown Minneapolis to witness the goings on surrounding a Trump rally inside the home of the Timberwolves. The festivities were a mere five blocks from my office. I’d tried to garner a ticket to …
NOVEMBER 25, 2024 – Reactions vary among the roughly 73 million voters who voted for Kamala Harris. Some people are scandalized and looking into permanent residency, even full citizenship requirements, in Canada, Costa Rica, Ireland or Portugal. Others are in the ring with a bunch of fellow angry Democrats accusing the Harris campaign and party …
NOVEMBER 20, 2024 – I’m pretty sure that Elon Musk’s name was not on the ballot earlier this month. But as it turns out, his influence was—next to Trump’s name. The owner of X contributed over $118 million toward the effort to elect (“re-elect”?) Trump, and more than ever in American democracy, money buys influence, …
NOVEMBER 18, 2024 – Blogger’s note: At the end of my post on October 9, 2019, the second part of a story about a trip to the ER up at the lake, I wrote, In the lobby, my wife was chatting away with three guys in camouflage. These cheerful musketeers were awaiting care of their …
NOVEMBER 17, 2024 – Last night before sailing off to Nod, I read more of Ian Frazier’s latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough. I highly recommend it. Currently, I’m reading all about the Bronx in the opening stages of the Revolutionary War. Of course, it’s all about the …
NOVEMBER 16, 2024 – Today was another glorious day in the “tree garden,” where I took full advantage of the unseasonably fair weather and blasted well beyond my goal of “bud-capping” 500 trees. As of nightfall, the count was closer to 600, though a far cry from my record of 1,000 two years ago, but …
NOVEMBER 15, 2024 – Our culture has long been “anti-elitist” but Trump’s recent cabinet appointments signal that we’re deep into territory hostile toward experts and expertise, with growing antipathy toward government and governance. Experts aren’t always right and non-experts aren’t always wrong, but context is everything. Back in the distant past when I managed a …
NOVEMBER 14, 2024 – Lately, I’ve been so focused on serious, heart-wrenching matters in my own little sphere, I’ve had little time or desire to focus much on the larger world. When I do raise my head for a wider view, however, I find perverse relief in a painful diversion: The Appointments. They are straight …
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 …
NOVEMBER 10, 2024 – Today on the medical front it was a day of rest before tomorrow’s round of tests. In the interim . . . back to politics . . . * * * As I read with amusement the continuing cascade of self-criticism by mainstream Democrats and the more acerbic attacks by progressives …
NOVEMBER 7, 2024 – “What in the world happened to the Republican Party?” Democrats had been asking ever since Trump assumed unquestioned and unquestionable control of it. In the run-up to the 2024 election, pundits predicted that if Trump lost, the party would lie in ruins. After Trump’s decisive defeat of Harris on Tuesday, however, …