Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 29, 2026 – This afternoon on the ride to our house for an after-school online art class, our fifth-grader granddaughter listed all the main Minnesota gubernatorial and U.S. senatorial candidates. I was pleased by her political awareness. Though she picks up a lot from discussions she hears around us, Illiana disclosed that the current …
OCTOBER 26, 2026 – Periodically, when the latest outrages emanating from the White House cast another pall over beloved land, my wife goes on yet another bender. She’ll say, “What are we doing to change things?” hastily adding, “We can’t just complain among people who share our disgust over what’s going on.” I agree . …
OCTOBER 25, 2026 – I must confess to my readership that occasionally I struggle to post my daily blog entry by my self-imposed deadline: midnight, UTC-6 (“Coordinated Universal Time”[1])(or UTC-5, during Daylight Savings Time). Yesterday’s effort was an example. Following a day of hard labor building mini-cages around a dozen more hemlock trees up at …
OCTOBER 24, 2026 – In every election cycle since the first one in which I participated (1972), candidates and their managers have declared that “this is the most important election in our lifetime.” I was always skeptical of the claim. In the first place, we haven’t yet lived our entire lifetime, so how would we …
OCTOBER 22, 2026 -This morning I took a few minutes to read more about what’s happening in France—and why. But here’s the rub: conditions that set off the recent violent demonstrations there exist in Belgium and Italy, as well. In the throes of an election cycle wherein “affordability” is a central campaign issue, America too …
OCTOBER 20, 2026 – This afternoon when I arrived at the car dealership to spring my vehicle from the service infirmary, I encountered another customer who happened to be a young Somali woman. “Are you of Somali origins?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, cautiously. “I want you to know that despite all the negative campaign …
OCTOBER 19, 2026 – Before my initial sojourn in Poland, I was cognizant of Polish antipathy toward Germany as a result of the Nazi Blitzkrieg and brutal occupation during WW II, but not until my intense travels there in late summer/early fall of 1981 did I learn of the Poles’ visceral hatred of the Russians. …
OCTOBER 18, 2026 – If you think the election results next month will solve all our difficulties, look no further than France. Our deepest problems aren’t unique to the United States, and they won’t be “solved” simply by throwing out the current batch of rascals and replacing them with a different batch of rascals. What …
OCTOBER 17, 2026 – Today we joined a few hundred other demonstrators at one of the “go-to” sites of anti-Trump protests around the Twin Cities. Our previous time at this site was in the dead of last winter, when we had to do the penguin-walk over ice covered sidewalks from our car to the protest, …
OCTOBER 15, 2026 – By now even the most ostrich-like Americans are familiar with the name Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman targeted by the Crime Family operation conducted through the Department of Injustice. This fishing expedition against her, launched just three weeks before the mid-terms, is such a blatant act of political intimidation, it should …
OCTOBER 14, 2026 – Of the American political system, one sordid feature that no longer commands any serious discourse or debate, let alone change, is campaign finance. All we read and hear is that each election cycle brings bigger floods of cash, much of it from the “mega-donor class.” This time around, the high-water mark …
OCTOBER 13, 2026 – This morning my wife and I watched the first press briefing of the new White House Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia. Our reaction was a mix of disbelief and laughter, which quickly morphed into disgust. Pray tell that the American electorate is smart enough—finally—to see just how far we’ve fallen and what …
OCTOBER 9, 2026 – Recently, after having read True Grit by Charles Portis, I watched the Coen brothers’ award-winning 2003 remake of the movie. Near the outset of the story, the inhabitants of Fort Smith, Arkansas gather to witness the hanging of three convicted murderers. All we know about them is what each imparts with …
OCTOBER 4, 2026 – Yesterday’s slow-poke mail delivery included two identical letters, one addressed to my wife and one to me, from our advantage plan health care insurance provider. The unwelcome news, viewed in stereo, was that our current advantage plans, which have worked just fine for years, will not be available for renewal on …
SEPTEMBER 29, 2026 – Late this morning I accidentally found myself watching live, Senator Cory Booker’s articulate diatribe condemning the Republican-staged persecution of former Special Counsel Jack Smith. The Republican theater was staged mainly for an audience of one, with the unrealistic hope that it will drive Fox audience turnout in November. Being the political …
SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 – Of all the goof-ball initiatives taken by the Current Regime, the biggest by any measure is the military action without an end in sight: the war against Iran. Back in April conventional wisdom on the part of Democrats was that if Trump didn’t end it before the mid-terms so that gas …
SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 – Yesterday I experienced two especially memorable conversations, one in the morning with a local friend and the other in the evening with a distant comrade. They were radically contrasting exchanges; one disturbing, the other calming. The two friends are years my senior. One was a sailor stationed aboard an American Navy …
SEPTEMBER 14, 2026 – Remember when the war in Iran was all over the news? Until recently, I thought we were never going to hear the end of it . . . the war—er, military conflict or military operation or whatever else the Administration calls (a) large scale depletion of our munitions arsenal, (b) the …
SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 – Years from now, scholars—perhaps in the form of AI, while the would-have-been-scholars, on GMI along with all other human beings, are sipping piña coladas on the beaches of southern Georgia (which, before a two-foot rise in seawater, was the Florida border)—will have provided the world with a definitive history of the …
SEPTEMBER 1, 2026 – Invariably, our monthly book club meetings start not with the book of the month but with an in-depth discussion of politics. Our members are well informed; after all, every one of them is a reader. Given the nexus between politics and economics, naturally our exchanges over the former also involve the …
AUGUST 18, 2026 – I know from experience that nothing in the Department of Boring beats someone announcing first thing in the morning that they had “the strangest dream last night”—then proceeding to recount it. The person might be excused if he uses fewer than 10 words, as in, “Last night I dreamt I was …
AUGUST 14, 2026 – (Cont.) In a nutshell . . . my epiphany, as it were, was about the rightwing perception of America as a (formerly) wonderful place that has lost its way, thanks the tentacles of a Communist plot, and the counterbalancing leftwing view that America was never such a wonderful place, given our …
AUGUST 13, 2026 – You never know when an epiphanic moment is going to hit you. It could be while you’re out for a walk or on your drive to meet another couple for dinner. Or on the way home from the dinner, as you mull over a particularly compelling part of the conversation, especially …
AUGUST 12, 2026 – Yesterday I expressed an unsettled feeling about the midterm elections, prompted by NYT columnist Thomas Friedman’s suggestion that they’ll be “razor close.” Today, however, I’m feeling slightly more sanguine, thanks to a bit of anecdotal triangulation. First, a “most favored nation” business client of mine—(a client who’s smart and interesting, good …
AUGUST 11, 2026 – Not since my “Pergola-on-a-Platform” project last summer and fall have I been so intensely immersed in a whimsical endeavor as I am with the design and construction of my model sailboats. Today I added another two vessels to the collection, but what’s even more notable on the fleet-building front is that …