Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
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 21, 2026 – Today after ferrying our granddaughter to school, I dispensed with some legal work, then shoved off for the northwoods. The balmy weather and gorgeous fall scenery along my route were in marked contrast to the political and economic discussions that filled public radio programming inside my car. After listening for over …
OCTOBER 16, 2026 – Admittedly, I’ve become a sailing vlogger junkie. I got hooked by the cheerful daily reports by Drew Smith, a Canadian sailor who documented his passage last year from New Zealand to Victoria, British Columbia. What impressed me were not only the vast distances crossed by the vlogger sailing his 1974 34-foot …
OCTOBER 8, 2026 – I’ve finally reached the point of exposure to AI—or rather, to all the chatter and nail-biting about it—where I no longer first see “Al,” as in short for “Alan,” when I encounter “A(.)I(.),” meaning “artificial intelligence.” But in understanding the implications of a world run by the latter, I’m no closer …
OCTOBER 1, 2026 – After managing client needs this morning and again for a stint this afternoon, my main focus today was the annual occasion of “reverse engineering” at the Red Cabin; that is, fall dock removal. Weather conditions were ideal for the project, and far from being a chore, the effort brought me tremendous …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2026 – What now seems to be in ancient times (the 1990s), the self-help guru Richard Carlson was punching out a series of books with a target market of human gerbils striving to get ahead on the proverbial wheel. Most of us gerbils had discovered that no matter how fast we made the …
SEPTEMBER 15, 2026 – After yesterday’s rant following a productive day on the legal front (was there a correlation?), I’m returning to the basics to recover my equilibrium. I don’t know if the condition that impels me to retreat to the infra-mundane, as it were, is a function of my age or simply the accelerating …
SEPTEMBER 3, 2026 – Over my lifetime, I’ve shaken hands with several non-famous super-geniuses, though I can’t say I seized on the opportunity to procure their autographs. Given the relative obscurity of these individuals, there’s no monetary value in their John or Johanna Hancocks. I’ve heard of a good many more super-geniuses, the names of …
AUGUST 23, 2026 – As a daily blogger of a site featuring “[o]riginal anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification,” I’m always on the lookout for subject matter, but sometimes the subject matter finds me. Today was one of those occasions—inside a Walmart store, no less. At a little past three this afternoon, it was announced …
AUGUST 16, 2026 – We tend to idealize about the past, complain about the present, and worry about the future. All too often I find myself in this three-way rut in life, though sometimes I scramble these, complaining about the past, idealizing about the future and worrying about the present. Take the family cabin experience, …
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 6, 2026 – Today marks my last day as a 71-year-old. Reciting such a banal fact allows me to join the dull chorus of Boomers who, in conjunction with citing their age, just can’t resist saying, “I can’t believe I’m . . .” No, I won’t complete the sentence. Instead, I’ll throw a contrarian’s …
JULY 30, 2026 – Early this morning I stepped outside the back door of the old cabin and strolled around to the front for a view of the lake. Sunbeams filtered through the trees to the east, signaling positive prospects for the day ahead. The air was already warm and a bit hazy but not …
JULY 29, 2026 – After dispensing with legal work—in which I experienced the satisfaction that accompanies “break-throughs”—I turned to my oft-mentioned project of late, construction of my model sailboat fleet. Most of today’s effort was devoted to intricate rigging, necessitating reliance on “cheaters,” pincer-nosed pliers and small-motor coordination. After hoisting main and jib on the …
JULY 28, 2026 – Today the waters parted long enough to allow for painting the “sails,” tiller, splashboard and hull trim of another vessel of my model sailboat-from-wood-scraps fleet. This one was particularly tricky—it’s dual colored (for a husband-and-wife crew among the guests we’ll be hosting at the Red Cabin in August) and required an …
JULY 27, 2026 – This morning my wife and I attended to a bit of familial “crisis management.” The good news is that we were able to discharge our parental duties by phone from the porch of the Red Cabin. With this priority temporarily addressed, I was able to return to my next priority: earning …
JULY 4, 2026 – To be honest, for me, the Bicentennial was a much bigger deal than the Semiquincentennial.[1] This inverted perspective is counter-intuitive: after all, “a quarter of a millennium” (or “half of half a millennium”) is much grander-sounding than “two centuries.” If celebration at the 200-year mark years warranted a few extra “bombs …
JUNE 26, 2026 – The most famous opening line in British literature is, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, …
JUNE 25, 2026 – (Cont.) Our son Byron deserves special credit for having placed the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum on our expedition’s itinerary. It’s not a destination I would’ve included—though not because of any negative bias or lack of interest. Byron himself had never expressed a particular interest in JFK or his legacy, …
JUNE 24, 2026 – (Cont.) The historical capstone to our Beantown expedition was an all too short morning-long visit to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the UMass campus along the Charles River. Since the library and museum opened the year after I graduated from college, I excused myself for never having …
JUNE 23, 2026 – (Cont.) Despite all the time I spent in Boston during my undergraduate days and on my many visits thereafter, I’d never walked the Freedom Trail. It was the brainchild of William Schofield, a columnist for the Boston Herald. He proposed it in a column in March 1951, and just three months …
JUNE 17, 2026 – In a big city with a sprawling subway or underground public transit system—London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, New York—the experience is similar: you descend down one large hole in the ground, board a train, ride a few stops, return to the surface of the earth and . . . Regardez! You’ve wound …
JUNE 12, 2026 – (Cont.) Anxiety: My Violin – Part I. Back in January I noticed an imperfection in my A string[1]. Often this is a sign the fine-wire binding around the string is about to unravel. When this occurs, nothing can be done except to replace the string. Easy enough, except . . . …
JUNE 11, 2026 – (Cont.) After the service, one of our “sustainability” classmates, Ellen Shuman (see my 6/8 post), asked if I’d been “nervous” playing my violin up there at the front of the chapel nave crowded with heavy hearts and meditative minds. “No,” I said. Which is not to say that in the months …