Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
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 18, 2025 – Recently, I watched a Netflix documentary about the mind-boggling effort to build, launch and deploy James Webb. Of course, I’m not referring to the second NASA administrator by that name but the largest telescope ever built (by earthlings) and named in honor of him. The documentary reminded me of what I’ve …
JANUARY 14, 2025 – Last Sunday my wife and I took our nine-year-old granddaughter to a play at the renowned Children’s Theater Company (CTC) adjacent to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While we wandered around the lobby waiting for the theater doors to open, I noticed the “Land Acknowledgment” posted off to the side. It …
JANUARY 12, 2025 – After blowin’ smoke, as I’m doing most of the time, today I broke from the mold and blew some snow. Overnight in these parts we received our third measurable snowfall of another wimpy winter. “Measurable” is a relative term; maybe an inch and a half, if you use you an elastic …
JANUARY 10, 2025 – Lately, each morning while I consume my porridge,[1] I pore over a coffee-table-size book bearing the expansive title, History of the World Map by Map. It’s as much an historical atlas as it is a sweeping narrative of epochs and empires, movements and migrations that have shaped the world of homo …
JANUARY 9, 2025 – I hadn’t intended to tune into Jimmy Carter’s funeral this morning—televised from end-to-end—at the National Cathedral. After all, I had important things to do (skiing) and important places to go (up and down “St. Moritz” in “Little Switzerland,” the regional park a mile from our house) . . . once I’d …
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 2, 2025 – To stay out of trouble . . . or to get myself into trouble, I’m not sure which . . . I mentor a couple of freshmen writing students at Southwest High School, ranked second among 36 public high schools in Minneapolis. I’m one of a group of volunteer mentors who …
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 27, 2024 – This evening I finished watching Darkest Hour, directed by Joe Wright and featuring Gary Oldman in the role of Winston Churchill. Oldman won an Oscar for Best Actor for his extraordinary performance in this historical drama. I’d read quite a lot about Churchill—his harrowing experiences as a soldier and war correspondent …
DECEMBER 24, 2024 – This morning my wife announced that she’d found tucked away in the very back of her underwear drawer[1], a neat stash of letters that our two sons had written to Santa Claus back in ancient times. Of course I wanted to see it—the stash of letters, I mean. They reflected a …
DECEMBER 22, 2024 – I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the sights, odors and cacophony of the marketplace. On the one hand, I’ve been drawn to the bazaar of commerce; to the grand combination of consumption, industry and trade and all the ancillary activities, from finance to economics to management to legal issues to …
DECEMBER 4, 2024 – Last night before bedtime—our granddaughter’s, not mine—I read from Stave I of A Christmas Carol. Few if any works of literature composed in English have enjoyed such broad and lasting popularity as C.D.’s book of the season. Compact—especially for Dickens—and impactful, it’s a tale that I appreciate ever more as I …
DECEMBER 1, 2024 – Today we hiked across Central Park to the Met, where we wandered slowly through the special exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, featuring works of the very early Renaissance, Sienese artists Duccio (ca. 1250/60 – ca. 1318/19) (in the main), and Simone Martini, and brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. After …
NOVEMBER 28, 2024 – I remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, first hit the theaters. At the time I was a freshman at Sterling School, a small boarding school in Craftsbury Common, a hilltop hamlet tucked away in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. There was no theater in our little village, …
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 22, 2024 – For me the day was a mad scramble on multiple fronts. Ironically, all was unexpectedly quiet on the most critical front—our oldest son’s health. His PET scan had been scheduled for 12:45, and we’d managed to arrive at the clinic with minutes to spare. After completing the requisite forms, he was …
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 …
NOVEMER 12, 2024 – Life for me has been a huge connect-the-dots project. I’m not sure what the final figure will be once all the dots are connected, but if I were to guess—which I’m about to do—I’d say the final figure will be full of flashbacks, intersections, coincidences, circular side-trips and the inevitable open-ended …
NOVEMBER 9, 2024 – At the personal, conscious level, our mere existence is a really big deal. In fact, it’s bigger than that. It’s everything. From an individual’s point of view, what could matter more than the individual’s existence? Okay, fine. I overstate things a bit or rather, a lot. What matters more than one’s …
NOVEMBER 8, 2024 – However much my heart, psyche and soul are restored and rejuvenated by the woods of Björnholm along the shore of a secluded lake, I also thrive in the society of my species, homo sapiens—beings every bit as noble as we are ignoble. Today I interacted only with the most noble, though …
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, …
NOVEMBER 6, 2024 – Early this morning before the rest of the household was up, I quietly went downstairs, fixed myself my usual breakfast, then slipped out of the house and out of town. The election results had taken their emotional toll on us all, and for the sake of everyone’s blood pressure, I wanted …