Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
NOVEMBER 9, 2025 – During our recent sojourn in San Francisco, our tour-guide-cousins gave us the back story of the pleasant Embarcadero Promenade along the bayside waterfront. In living memory it had been the site of the Embarcadero Freeway, a “permanent” assault on the sensibilities of all decent folk who lived in its vicinity. As …
NOVEMBER 8, 2025 – Today’s issue of The Times featured a book review and an article that caught my attention. The rest was jetsam, not because it wasn’t informative or useful in divining the state and direction of our country, but because I had places to visit, people to meet, things to do. The book …
NOVEMBER 5, 2025 – If you ask what I think about how we govern ourselves in this country, I could easily talk your ears off. You might say I’ve got some ideas on the subject. Governance per se is different from substantive public policy, however, but given how policy is formulated and implemented, governance and …
OCTOBER 31, 2025 – Among the people with whom we circulate, the mere mention of politics inevitably prompts expressions of despair. Fear, anger and anxiety dominate the ensuing conversations—and social media posts. There are no two ways about it, we find ourselves saying to one another: the country is circling the drain. But we owe …
OCTOBER 21, 2025 – When it comes to “big news,” we live in a world that’s skewed more than ever toward the transactional as opposed to the strategic. This phenomenon is driven largely by the most prominent personality in our collective long-running (ironically) short-term attention span, the current president of the United States. Everything about …
OCTOBER 18, 2025 – Blogger’s note: The third and final installment of the series, “Seeing the Past in the Present” will be posted tomorrow. I’ve heard it said that we live in news and information silos in which we’re fed a steady diet of our own unwavering opinions; that we need to step out of …
OCTOBER 15, 2025 – Recently, a friend with years of observing and participating in the world, told me that the two things she worries about most for her children and grandchildren are (a) climate change; and (b) our democracy. I would put those same two concerns at the top of the list. Nearly all other …
OCTOBER 14, 2025 – In litigation a conflict of interest can arise between the lawyer and the lawyer’s own client. It works something like this: in the spirit of “zealous advocacy,” a standard to which every lawyer is ethically bound, but more pragmatically, in the interest of racking up billable hours, the lawyer convinces the …
OCTOBER 7, 2025 – Over the years I’ve met numerous interesting people who live along my walking route to and from “Little Switzerland.”[1] With some of these folks I’ve enjoyed extensive conversations about a host of subjects. One standout is a fellow, Phillip, eight years my senior, whose house is on the “Matterhorn” overlooking the …
OCTOBER 5, 2025 – Over supper this evening back home, my wife and I watched some cable TV news. Big mistake. Giving us a bad case of indigestion were Trump’s weekend speech touting a trillion-dollar military budget and Hegseth’s “warrior talk” about using the military against American civilians in blue cities. These reports were chased …
SEPTEMBER 30, 2025 – Today I’d planned on more Zen, more nirvana; after all, I was still at the Red Cabin, our “Shangri-La,” still working on the “Pergola-on-a-Platform” project. But on some days, the Buddhist ideal remains high up in the clouds when you find yourself down in the lowland weeds. Straight out of the …
SEPTEMBER 26, 2025 – Sorry, Minnesota, Ramsey County and St. Paul: I used to shop at the Midway Menards store near our house. During the week I’d load up on supplies and materials for DYI projects at the Red Cabin and on weekends, ferry them up to the Northwoods. But recently I noticed I’d been …
SEPTEMBER 24, 2025 – I’d heard it was “bad”—really bad—but until I later watched the video of Trump’s speech before the UN General Assembly I had no idea just how bad his performance was. To my friends, family members, and acquaintances who to this day either actively support or acquiesce in this mad man’s continuation …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2025 – Yesterday, for anticipated entertainment value akin to watching the trailer for the latest blockbuster monster movie, I Googled “Charlie Kirk funeral.” As with a horror film, I had no intention—or stomach—for watching anything besides brief excerpts, especially when I saw the duration of the production digitally-displayed in the corner—over five (!) …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2025 – Thanks to the confluence of a host of factors, we’re a nation whose hair is on fire. I’m in the camp that . . . well, anyone who’s followed my blog for long knows which camp I’m in, or maybe the better way to put it is, “which camp I’m definitely …
SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 – I’d like to travel across the country, that is, through the countryside, small towns, medium-size communities, and big cities. I’d like to go up and down the coasts, the Northeast, the Northwest, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Deep South, the Midwest, the West, plus the great outlier states, Alaska and Hawaii. …
SEPTEMBER 9, 2025 – Today’s edition of the NYT included an eye-grabbing article, “Reading Skills of 12th Graders Hits New Low.” The second sentence in the article was, “Their math scores fell as well.” Given the critical importance of reading and math skills to . . . well . . . a healthy democracy and …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2025 – This morning I watched the full hour-plus-long video of a media Q and A session with John Shin, a free-lance violinist, his wife, also a musician, and his attorney in the attorney’s office in Utah. Based on this stunning, revelatory presentation, I concluded that what we’re all witnessing is “the Mephisto …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2025 – Today I enjoyed three disparate experiences that suggest our ship isn’t listing quite as fast or dramatically as it seemed to me after reading this morning’s headlines. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that the ship is free of serious problems below the waterline or that the furniture on the Lido deck …
SEPTEMBER 5, 2025 – One common phenomenon among us “older folks” is being continually awestruck by the sheer volume of knowledge that lies beyond our capacity to encounter, let alone absorb. This sounds naively quaint. It’s the same order of naiveté as entering the Library of Congress and saying (out loud), “Geez Louise but this …
SEPTEMBER 4, 2025 – This evening I listened to snippets of the Senate hearing today during which RFK, Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, was grilled by Democrats and Republicans—as well he should be until he resigns or his boss decides to fire him. One can hope. But just as Trump …
AUGUST 25, 2025 – Those of us who were scandalized by Trump from his earliest days as a self-promoter were plenty put-off by his “birther campaign” against President Obama. Ludicrous on its face, the effort to question Obama’s citizenship was little more than a cheap circus act conducted by an amateur clown. Little could we …
AUGUST 19, 2025 – I grew up in a household that was unabashedly Republican and anti-government, which was a bit ironic, since my dad worked for . . . the government[1]. Given the amount of at-home political discussion, by osmosis I was politically aware from a very early age. By fifth grade and the 1964 …
AUGUST 5, 2025 – Last week Trump’s impulsivity triggered the most emblematic move of his disastrous second administration. If anything—anything[1]—could give his Republican followers a reason to ditch him once and for all, this move would be it. But of course, it won’t be. The party is so far beyond self-redemption, nothing will derail the …
AUGUST 2, 2025 – Lately, I’ve been torn. In these troubled times . . . Do I climb onto the rooftop to shout “The sky is falling!” or do I crawl into the wine cellar to mumble, “Uh, um, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just grab another bottle of grape sauce …