Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 4, 2024 – Lord knows there’s lots to think and talk about these days: campaign shenanigans; suffering—and conspiracy theories (will they never end?) associated with disaster recovery in the wake of Helene; mass war criminality in Sudan; Antarctica turning green from global warming; the staggering blow to the economy if we were to round …
SEPTEMBER 21, 2024 – After breakfast on the porch I ventured out to the dock to survey the unsettled weather. The wind was picking up from the southeast, and dark clouds lined the horizon. It wouldn’t take long for a clearer picture to form. By 10 o’clock the wind was roaring at 20 miles an …
SEPTEMBER 16, 2024 – Today on my walk I ran into . . . er, encountered . . . an acquaintance of mine, a retired engineer, whom I hadn’t seen since early this summer. He and his wife own a nice home with a grand view of the park, and he was out tending a …
SEPTEMBER 15, 2024 – Aging seems to increase my amazement. Late one evening recently we sat with friends out on the dock for conversation and a bit of star-gazing. The first quarter moon had already set, leaving the Milky Way and constellations in full command of the celestial stage. I’d brought out two sets of …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2024 – Earlier this summer I constructed two wooden ramps to provide passage over two side-by-side fallen giants of the woods, each . . . two feet in diameter. The completed project looked simple enough, but in design and construction the operation required a fair among of engineering. As with most completed cabin …
SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 – (Cont.) When Susan and her husband Bob pulled into the yard, I had no idea what to expect. She was such a young kid when we’d last met on the deck of her family’s swimming pool in New Jersey, she’d made no lasting impression. We’d had no contact since. Jenny, who’d …
SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 – (Cont,) Many families experience splits, rifts, friction, upheavals, estrangement. The fractures in our own—cousin vs. cousin (Carol’s father vs. my uncle) and, it seemed, brother vs. brother (Carol’s grandfather vs. mine)—were not unusual as families go. Only a specialisit in abnormal psychology, however, could categorize the discord that ebbed and flowed …
SEPTEMBER 3, 2024 – (Cont.) In anticipation of our mini-reunion with Carol and her husband Barry, Jenny and I talked about things we could do and places where we could dine out. On our list were “Anna’s house” two doors down, where Anna and her husband Mickey lived. They were shirt-tail relatives of ours, though …
AUGUST 30, 2024 – Blogger’s note: Today’s central activity—a trip to the Minnesota State Fair with our almost nine-year-old granddaughter—produced material and memories that warranted a break from my Landscaping: The Great Escape series. “Plan A” called for my wife to take Illiana to the Minnesota State Fair today while I got an early start …
AUGUST 19, 2024 – My main objective in taking the boat for a spin was to see if I could get the darned thing off the lift. I’d already experienced difficulty in this regard before our trip to Portugal two weeks ago, and the lake level has dropped another inch or two since. In the …
AUGUST 5, 2024 – As with many a plan that goes awry, its derailment or alternative can often produce a serendipitous result. Having booked a stateroom aboard the R.M.S. Titanic, for example, a couple misses the ship’s departure, and lo and behold, they get to avoid swimming with the icebergs. Or in my largely unremarkable …
AUGUST 2, 2024 – (Cont.) When the auto-mechanic . . . er, dental hygienist . . . said that my Sonicare toothbrush had worked wonders on my gumlines, I immediately thought of another analogy: me as a country. When I heard the good news about the condition of my gums, I thought of myself as …
AUGUST 1, 2024 – Among the first devices that a student meets in a creative writing class are the simile and the metaphor. Likewise, among the initial cognitive tactics taught in law school is thinking analogically. As a practical matter, very early on in my life I’d resorted to similes, metaphors, and analogies, not so …
JULY 25, 2024 – (Cont.) As she hobbled from the convent to the school building a hundred feet away, the good sister pointed out the exact spot where a few weeks back she’d stumbled, fallen and broken her hip. There she’d lain, wailing in agony until the associate pastor discovered her and called for an ambulance. After …
JULY 20, 2024 – Yesterday we earthlings woke up to the news that a multi-billion company few of us had ever heard of was responsible for a widespread snafu affecting computer systems the world over. In dual irony the company—CrowdStrike—produces cybersecurity software. A glitch in the way updated code interacted with Microsoft Windows is what …
JULY 17, 2024 – For the Fourth of July our neighbor John was kind enough to accommodate some of our guests by opening up one of the seldom-used cabins on his compound, which borders our land on the other side of the “swamp woods.” In one of the bedrooms was a chalkboard on which someone …
JULY 12, 2024 – After waking up this morning, I crept downstairs, and tiptoed into the dining where I’d left my “like new” MacBrook Pro overnight. It was on the dining room table and plugged in, but from six feet away I could see the charging light wasn’t on. Bad sign, and sure enough, when …
JULY 11, 2024 – The saga continues, but before I provide today’s installment, I have to comment on the word “saga.” It’s an old hardy Scandinavian word that has survived wars, plagues, famines, volcanoes (think “Iceland”), and modernity (so far). It means “story,” in old Norse, modern Scandinavian languages, and English, of course. In the …
JULY 8, 2024 – Among the innumerable micro-adventures of modern life is the smartphone, laptop or kindred device that up and dies—which is an odd idiom, since what thing, animate or inanimate, goes “up” then dies? I can think of things that either go down and die or die in place, but I’ve never heard …
JULY 6, 2024 – Through personal hell and high water, for nearly five years straight I’ve not missed a single day of posting on this blog . . . until the day before yesterday. I cannot erase this gap, but I can explain it. No remarkable circumstances caused the break, but the interruption produced “material” …
JULY 4, 2024 – On this Independence Day, it’s especially pertinent to assess where we now find ourselves as a nation. We live in contentious times, but nearly all times past have been filled with conflict. Have we forgotten that our nation was forged in the fire of upheaval and upon the anvil of war? …
JULY 2, 2024 – As another Independence Day approaches, should we be worried about the state of our country and its prospects? Some would say . . . Strike that; a lot of people would say we should be worried. Democrats, for example. And Republicans, but not for the same reasons that Democrats are worried. …
JUNE 14, 2024 – Aboard the train hurtling across the American countryside for two full days, I’d been drawn to immediate and fleeting surroundings as if they were a full life compressed into fast-motion review. The oft-repeating train whistle seemed to signal my interaction with others along the landscape of our integrated existence. I’ll never …
JUNE 5, 2024 – Back in the day when I was a compulsive runner and x-c skier, I didn’t think much during the thousands of hours I spent pounding the pavement or striding relentlessly down the track. The physical demands were too intense to allow for anything but focus on pace or . . . …
JUNE 4, 2024 – In search of a topic for today’s post, I first scanned the early morning news headlines, but all that came through was, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Then, while comfortably seated on our back porch, I happened to glance up from my cup of java just as a bird …