Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MARCH 12, 2021 – Last Wednesday I wrote about “church town” U.S.A., which was a tad weird, given that I’m wholly unholy. Call it nostalgia or . . . the aging process amidst a world in constant tumult. My earlier post, however, didn’t go inside any of the mentioned churches. That’s because I myself never …
MARCH 11, 2021 – In her prime I didn’t appreciate Mother. She wasn’t afraid to try new things, meet new people, consider alternative ideas. As I myself struggled to conform to community standards, I found her unconventionality unbecoming. Take for instance the time members of the Minneapolis Symphony (now Minnesota Orchestra) staged a concert at …
MARCH 10, 2021 – Where I grew up, sometimes you’d run into a kid who went to Mt. Olivet Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, hidden on our side of town; the Baptist Church, standing across from Monty’s Pure Oil at Main and Ferry; the Congregational Church, sitting modestly behind Anoka Junior High School; the understated Methodist …
MARCH 9, 2021 – On today’s local news the youthful forecaster cheerfully promised bright sunshine and record high temperatures. Mercury’s already flying high—well above 40. My main concern is . . . over the past 24 hours, how much snow has disappeared from my remaining run in nearby “Little Switzerland”? Yesterday, before the sun got …
FEBRUARY 28, 2021 – Though my dad was athletic, he was not into sports. In fact, he openly despised our culture’s obsession with sports. But he loved to ice skate, and he did so with perfection. Each year he’d drive the family 20 miles down the (Mississippi) River Road to Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, where a …
FEBRUARY 26, 2021 – I remember the story well—how Mother backed her car into a lamp post in the parking lot next to the church, bashing the bumper and trunk lid. What impressed me most, however, was Dad’s sense of humor about it. After all, Mother had managed to back into the same lamp post …
FEBRUARY 5, 2021 – During my banking years, the “Best Practices” corporate fad worked its way into on-site drinking water. Senior management imposed quotas on lower management, and soon everyone was obsessed with generating “best practice” ideas just to mollify the Quota Police. The fad topped the agenda of my boss’s weekly direct reports meetings. …
JANUARY 31, 2021 – Grandpa Nilsson would’ve turned 130 today. He died long ago, but his influences thrive. The greatest was musical, with hardscrabble origins. Grandpa’s mother died when he was 18 months old, a month following his infant sister’s death. Grandpa’s immigrant father, Johan, carried on, working 16-hour days as a Minneapolis streetcar conductor …
JANUARY 28, 2021 – My first “chew” was Juicy Fruit—Dad’s brand. Occasionally, Mother chewed gum (her favorite was Chiclets), but Dad was our family’s main gum-chewer. He never chewed alone. He always offered us kids some Juicy Fruit too. Dad’s generosity, however, was limited by frugality: he himself never chewed a whole stick of gum, …
JANUARY 22, 2021 – Yesterday my book club met via Zoom to discuss our latest “assignment”—The Contest – The 1968 Election and the War for American’s Soul by Michael Schumacher (See Monday’s post). Geezers now, we readers were 12 to 14 (me) in that watershed year. By 1967, I’d become a certifiable news nerd. I …
DECEMBER 22, 2020 – . . . Not to be confused with “The Wise Men.” I used to think Christmas my freshman year of college was the worst ever—for the simple reason that our semester-end final exams were scheduled for the week after Christmas vacation, as it was called. I wasn’t the only student disturbed …
DECEMBER 16, 2020 – Even as a kid, I was fascinated by Russia. I’m not sure what was to account for that early interest. Perhaps it was the slide show during our family’s annual get-together with the Ibeles a few days before Christmas in 1961. Warren Ibele, the dad, was Dean of the School of …
DECEMBER 15, 2020 – The overnight low reached a low for this season thus far: 11F. That’s officially . . . cold. Growing up in Minnesota I had plenty of exposure to extreme cold. I didn’t mind it, mainly because it was always a precursor to hot chocolate, which I loved—and still do. In seventh …
DECEMBER 13, 2020 – Today’s Times tells about yesterday’s pro-Trump demonstrations protesting the “stolen” election. The continuing defiance follows the Supreme Court’s “thumbs downs” rejection of Trump’s last-gasp effort to reverse reality. One protester, a woman from Jacksonville, said “God told her” to drive to Atlanta to join the pro-Trump protest there and said she …
DECEMBER 1, 2020 – In downsizing files that occupy too much household storage space, I’ve uncovered many ancient relics. Some are so amusing, I should be charging myself admission. Take for example a bound, 33-page handout from a 1999 Continuing Legal Education seminar, entitled, “Internet Legal Research ‘101’.” The first heading was, “What is the …
NOVEMBER 20, 2020 – (Cont.) Dad liked shattering clay pigeons, but neither that experience nor the shooting of the woodchuck turned him into a gun person; certainly not a hunter. Dad was counter-culture. I didn’t know a single boy (I didn’t ask the girls) in my class who didn’t hunt with his dad. During duck- …
NOVEMBER 19, 2020 – Dad wasn’t a hunter or a gun owner, but a day arrived when he needed to borrow a gun. A short while later arrived the day when he fired the gun. I wasn’t directly on hand when he pulled the trigger. I was nine years old and riding my oversized bike …
NOVEMBER 14, 2020 – I often play a mind game in which I encounter someone from generations, centuries, even millennia ago or . . . an intelligent being from some other part of the cosmos altogether. My leading question is, “What amazes you most about ‘my’ world?” In the case of nearly every imaginary past …
NOVEMBER 12, 2020 – Tuesday brought a much-needed diversion from politics: a plunge in temperature followed by sleet, then snow. My drive home from an appointment near the capitol was a nerve-wracking expedition—streets were an icy mess, and banana-peel-inclines were especially problematic. At one hilltop intersection I had no traction when the light turned green. …
OCTOBER 4, 2020 – Yesterday I spent all day in my “tree garden” in the back woods of our family’s lakeside retreat in northwestern Wisconsin. With the advance of fall, countless pine seedlings are now visible across the acreage that was logged several years ago. For months I’ve been trimming brush and poplar shoots around …
OCTOBER 3, 2020 – I discovered escapism at the Gilombardo School of Music. The “program” every Saturday of my sixth and seventh grade school years involved a 40-minute drive to Minneapolis for classes in solfege and music theory, a private lesson, orchestra rehearsal, a brief visit with my grandfather, who lived nearby, and the trip …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 – When I worked at First Bank, now USBank, I had a boss whose name was Jim Roberts. One of my co-workers called him “Jim Bob” for short. Pretty soon, we all called Jim, “Jim Bob,” though never to his face. Jim Bob was a good boss—smart, effective, trustworthy, affable. We got …
SEPTEMBER 21, 2020 – Out of nowhere Saturday came his text: “How are you and your family[?] Long time w no communication. I hope Trump doesn’t get to pick another SC Justice. Can we talk? Give me a good time tomorrow. Will be working on cabin. Jeff.” It was my close college friend, Jeff Oppenheim. …
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020 – Recently, a good friend of mine, whose sails had been below my horizons for all too long, emailed me an essay by E. B. White: The Sea and the Wind that Blows. White is the writer’s writer (Sea—I mean see—The Elements of Style). I didn’t know that the Man of Style …
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 – When I was little, our house caught fire—or rather, our attached garage did. The cause: a box of hot ashes that the cleaning woman had stowed between studs of the garage wall. At the moment Mother yelled, “Fire!”—I was on the living room floor listening to the phonograph play the story …