Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MARCH 17, 2020 – As I sit in our “sitting room,” sipping coffee, distancing myself from the latest news (while my wife, on the other hand, reads it), and moving my fingers across the keyboard of my laptop, I realize that by chance I’m wearing my dark green sweatshirt—the one about which my wife often …
MARCH 15, 2020 – Yesterday, the earth turned, the sun shone, the stars came out . . . and abject fear and chaos ruled the news feed and the airwaves until they (the fear/chaos) didn’t, if you had the good sense to shut ’em down. In my own case, after my third call-out of a …
MARCH 15, 2020 – It’s easy to worry yourself sick—oops, bad imagery; it’s easy to worry yourself into a state of extreme anxiety if you consume too much information about corvid-19. Fine, but none of us wants self or any loved one to be among the millions who could fall seriously ill from The Virus. …
MARCH 12, 2020 – Tuesday evening I’d composed a post for Wednesday. Entitled, “BERNIE BURNIN’,” it lampooned CNN coverage of primary results Tuesday evening. By Wednesday morning it seemed trivial, irrelevant, and not very humorous. My daily voyage got struct by a rogue wave, within a sea-change inside a hurricane. For days I’d been on …
MARCH 9, 2020 – Yesterday’s edition of The New York Times—delivered late and to a dwindling snowbank more than stocking feet away from our front step—contained the usual week’s worth of interesting reading material. However, given the ridiculously nice weather that blossomed over our region, I read nothing except the lead story of the SundayStyles …
MARCH 8, 2020 – Yesterday one of our sons said to my wife and me, “You have to quit looking at the news.” Sound advice—after reading that one more article by an infectious disease physician or one more report about a statistician’s explanation of risk algorithms, either of which article/report seems to leave me with …
MARCH 7, 2020 – Life is a big carnival ride that suddenly lost its power. Some of us are swinging in the very highest seats looking out over the carnival grounds as the sun’s light and warmth dip toward the horizon. Others of us are swinging upside down, growing more nauseous by the minute. A …
FEBRUARY 22, 2020 – These days, we dwell on the crazy and dysfunctional about our politics. I hear people—myself included!—say, “It’s never been this bad.” And yet, despite our insanity, we manage many things extraordinarily well. When we’re down on the state of our world, it’s important to take stock of what does work and celebrate …
FEBRUARY 16, 2020 – Political campaigns promote many ideas for perfecting the world. In our more lucid moments, we know perfection is elusive, but the appeal of universal justice, health care, and prosperity is intoxicating. Though we don’t have a snowball’s chance in Minnesota today of achieving universal perfection, I’ve had three experiences that suggest …
FEBRUARY 15, 2020 – In every era society faces two over-arching questions: 1. What’s happening? and 2. What should be done about it? In the current era, people have ready but competing answers to the second question. These prescriptions, however, turn on the answer to the first question, and again, everyone knows exactly what’s happening. …
FEBRUARY 11, 2020 – As the sun rose yesterday morning, it revealed a spectacular display of mid-winter hoarfrost. When I rushed out the back doorway to catch my bus, the beauty was at its peak. An inner voice urged me to return, change into ski clothes and head for “Little Switzerland” to take “Ooo, Ahhh!” …
FEBRUARY 9, 2020 – When I was in law school, I had a legal-writing professor whose class was a real downer. At the outset of every session, he’d walk to the chalkboard, pick up a stick of chalk and write across the board, “THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THIS WORLD.” I thought this was a …
FEBRUARY 7, 2020 – Wednesday brought speeches by democracy’s heroes, Senators Jones and Romney, followed by the death knell of democracy—Trump’s acquittal. Thursday brought Trump’s unbridled hate and vindictiveness. For a man who can’t distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, God from the devil, Trump’s condemnation of House Democrats as “evil” was the penultimate …
FEBRUARY 3, 2020 – I grew up in a household in which organized sports were frowned upon, and the more highly organized the sport, the greater the frown. Our dad was the frowner in chief. He loved books, art, classical music, and was reliably skeptical of whatever attracted the masses. Sports qualified as a “masses …
JANUARY 14, 2020 – This is my 250th blog post. At 500 words per post, the cumulative total equals 125,000 words. My brother-in-law’s memoir—yet to be published—comes in at around 150,000. Fifty more blog posts and my total collection will attain equivalency with his memoir . . . in quantity, anyway. As I hiked back …
JANUARY 1, 2020 – Happy New Year! May the Year of Perfect Vision bring all of us good cheer, excellent health, rewarding encounters, happy relationships and abundant prosperity! Now to get down to the hard work of bringing those objectives to fruition. For my own little world I’ve devised a list of New Year’s Resolutions …
DECEMBER 31, 2019 – This last day of 2019 prompts reflection about the past 12 months. In cosmic terms, this occasion is fairly hum-drum. Strike “fairly.” From a human perspective, it’s arbitrary. The demarcation between “old year” and “new year” could be established at any time in the earth’s revolution around its star. It’s a …
December 26, 2019 – ‘Twas a whirlwind—planning, scheduling, shopping, decorating, wrapping, unwrapping, cooking, baking, eating, driving, drinking, visiting, entertaining, game-playing. The Big Holiday has passed, and people have scattered. With the memories fresh, I reflect on certain encounters during the festivities. I feel myself shedding the chains of ignorance and the blinders of biases. The …
DECEMBER 25, 2019 – (excerpted from Inheritance – A Memoir) “Hey! You’re supposed to be asleep!” he said in an excited, half-whisper. “We [he always used the royal “we”] spent all day at Santa’s workshop. He asked about you and your sisters, and we said, ‘The sisters are all good little girls—but Eric—well, he’s a …
DECEMBER 23, 2019 – In the lead-up to my fourth Christmas, our dad read every word of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to our entire family. During each session, which seemed like an eternity, Mother, my sisters, and I sat perfectly still while Dad read the classic tale. Later, he bought an LP version of …
DECEMBER 22, 2019 – On Thursday our younger and his wife flew to Minnesota to help us celebrate Christmas. In anticipation of their arrival, my wife worked her usual home decoration miracles, inside and out. The centerpiece is a beautifully trimmed Tannenbaum. I was quite content to defer to her sensibilities and wallow in the …
DECEMBER 16, 2019 – You’ll be shocked to learn that I’m currently in . . . prison. Or maybe you’re not surprised. As some of you already know, my wife was sentenced a few weeks ago. Our crimes? “Circulating among humanity.” Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe that such an offense could be a …
DECEMBER 11, 2019 – Yesterday at 5:30 p.m. while I shivered at my bus stop, I checked the temperature on my phone: 4F. To my relief, the 5:35 bus appeared right on time. The commute the evening before had been a different story. Through new snow, buses on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis had crawled …
DECEMBER 1, 2019 – Yesterday evening while my poor wife coughed at home, I ventured to Pantages Theater in Minneapolis for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Christmas. It was a brilliant show: Rich Dworsky at the piano, with the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band; Tim Russell and Sue Scott as “the voices”; Fred Newman at sound …
NOVEMBER 29, 2019 – When I first heard Art Garfunkel’s song, “(What a) Wonderful World,” I thought the lyrics were kind of dumb. Now that the aging process has introduced me to my own (multiple forms of) dumbness, I realize that in a back-handed, unintentional way, the song serves as a kind of paean to …