Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
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 …
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 – My third memorable fifth-grade lesson was about battlefield courage. The lesson could be traced directly to the Civil War. Background is in order. My dad was a student of the Civil War. He’d read all of Bruce Catton’s books on the subject and owned the four-inch-thick, illustrated volume, Civil War, published …
SEPTEMBER 13, 2020 – (cont.) As I circled the correct answer to question #4 (Susan had erased her circle around a wrong answer), I pictured a pool of vomit in the aisle; Mrs. Hilliard saying “Everyone stay calm,” then rushing out of the room; her returning minutes later with “Harry,” the friendly custodian only slightly …
SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 – My second memorable lesson from fifth grade was about guilt, taught again unwittingly by Susan Johansen, the girl who sat in front of me (see my 9/11 post – “The Sneeze”). One winter day our official teacher, Mrs. Hilliard, handed out a two-page, mimeographed math quiz and gave us instructions as …
SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 – I learned three memorable things in fifth grade. The first concerned sneezing. Until then, I’d never given sneezing much thought. When I had to sneeze, I sneezed. My sneezes were normal. They didn’t scare the cat or cause my arms to flap. And they didn’t produce improbable sounds—nothing like BZZZZZKK! which …
SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 – (Cont.) I was ecstatic but perplexed. The big kids at home had ample space to “deal with” their catches—a stretch of sand, a patch of grass, terra firma on which to lay the fish and work the hook out of its mouth. But a bass flopping around inside a net on …
SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 – (Cont.) When Dad got something special for any of my sisters or me—a birthday present, for example—he’d “hide” it on the back shelf of the front hall closet, which was pretty much his closet, where he parked his fedora, hat brush, dress coats, and umbrella. Every day in the weeks leading …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 – Recently, while sitting on the dock, my wife and I watched a lone fisherman out a ways haul in a catch. “Hard to tell,” I said, “if it’s a bass or a walleye; it’s definitely not a northern or a muskie.” “O-o-h-h,” my wife scoffed. “You don’t know the first thing …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 – At Björnholm, Dad was always engaged in a project relating to the operation, maintenance, or improvement of the cabin. Mother saw it as “work”—the burden of owning property, but she was wrong. For Dad, whose day job back in the cities involved wearing a suit and managing an array of people …
SEPTEMBER 5, 2020 – I never met him but was shown photos in his prime. He looked the part he’d assumed in life. His name was Bernard, and I knew his parents, Carl and Nellie, and his three sisters, who stayed close to home. Nellie was my grandmother’s cousin from Småland, back in Sweden. On …
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 – Amidst the pandemic I’ve moved the world headquarters of my law office to the Red Cabin. My wife joins me now and again until boredom and her online book business lead back to “the cities.” Although I’m plenty sociable, I’ve also always enjoyed solitude, especially when surrounded by “nature.” “Nature” is …
AUGUST 21, 2020 – Yesterday I wrote about “Lady Gaga,” confusing her birthday (August 14), with my uncle’s, which, in fact, was yesterday. Having overshadowed the memory of “his day” with memories of “Gaga,” I must now write about Uncle Bruce—“UB”—the Inimitable. Originally, he was our Santa Claus (see 12/24-25/19 posts). Later, he was my …
AUGUST 20, 2020 – She was born on this day 124 years ago. We called her “Gaga” because at the babbling stage, my oldest sister called our other grandmother just plain, “Ga.” When confronted with a second grandmother, my inventive sister simply doubled up. Gaga’s name was “Orrell,” after the village of “Ore Hill” in …
AUGUST 19, 2020 – [Cont.] pretended Dad’s garden shovel was Stanley, the steam shovel in one of my Golden Books, and the wheelbarrow was a one-wheel version of my big toy dump truck. As I watched, Dad and Grandpa met two challenges with one source of dirt—what left the basement was hauled first to the …
AUGUST 18, 2020 – My dad was possibly the only man in the history of DIY projects who excavated manually, not one but two basements—concurrently. One basement was at our house in Anoka, Minnesota— “Basement No. 1.” The other—“Basement No. 2”—was at the family cabin in northwest Wisconsin. The Anoka house was built in ancient …
AUGUST 9, 2020 – Early on I was destined for Ayn Rand Land. One of my grandpas was “Ragnar,” the name of the hero-privateer in Rand’s best-seller, Atlas Shrugged. My other grandpa was a businessman. My dad was an arch-conservative, meaning my mom had to go along. Then the kicker: my oldest sister, an intellectual …
AUGUST 7, 2020 – That applies to me but also to my bro-in-law “GK.” In further coincidence, he was born in the same hospital as was his wife, my younger sister, years later—a converted Victorian house on Ferry Street in Anoka, Minnesota. You could tell it was a hospital: a modestly sized, bluish neon “HOSPITAL” …