Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JULY 2, 2020 – (Cont.) They pulled up their canoe onto the small landing of the little island and unloaded their gear. While the kids pitched skippers across the smooth waters around the island, Grandpa and Uncle Sugar pulled the big umbrella tent out of its oilskin bag. They soon discovered, however, that the island …
JUNE 22, 2020 – In my first year of practice, I handled “misdemeanor prosecutions” under my firm’s contract with a small suburb. Most cases involved traffic violations, though occasionally a bar scofflaw produced disorderly conduct charges. I usually negotiated deals but drove harder bargains in DUI cases. Several went to trial, which I relished for …
JUNE 21, 2020 – Current anti-police sentiment reminds me of my own run-in with the cops eight years ago. My clients were the board members of a local mosque. They were battling a faction that had been previously ousted. My people—the “good guys”—were smart, reliable, educated, and struggling hard to make something of themselves here …
JUNE 20, 2020 – As the professor in tweed lit his pipe in front of us 10 students that first day of “The History of Western Civilization,” no one could’ve foreseen the future (three-and-a-half-years later): me in disguise, shoving a gigantic whipped cream pie into the prof’s face. A still-shot of that scene would cap …
JUNE 19, 2020 – “This is where they died,” said Tom. I knew immediately his reference . . * * * Between classes one morning barely a month into my freshman year of college nearly four years before, I checked my mailbox in the basement of the Moulton Union. There I found a letter from …
JUNE 18, 2020 – (Cont.) – Among the “rascals” was Tom, a middle school classmate of mine whom I hadn’t seen since I’d been sent to boarding school eight years before. We hadn’t been particularly close friends, but we’d been together in band (Tom on trumpet; I on drums) and track (he, the sprinter; I, …
JUNE 17, 2020 – On our drive yesterday in the full splendor of early summer, we passed a column of dump trucks lumbering in the opposite lane toward a road construction zone behind us. The trucks reminded me of the summer when I drove one. I was between college and law school and looking for …
JUNE 11, 2020 – Wind is caused by differences in atmospheric pressure—a high pressure system battling it out with a low; or when two people with sharply contrasting opinions have a shout-out. Yesterday brought a lot of wind to our neck of the woods. Oops! Bad choice of words. I meant “golf course.” After escaping …
JUNE 5, 2020 – I’d just sat down to write today’s post, when “ding”—another email arrived. The author was our good Czech friend, the inimitable Dr. Pavel Šebesta from Prague. The email was his first to me in eons. It was classic Pavel—pithy and packed with news and questions. Attached were bonuses . . . …
MAY 18, 2020 – When I was a kid, whistling was common. My dad was a virtuoso whistler. The forte and mezzo-forte allegro and allegretto parts he whistled conventionally, that is, through puckered lips. The piano and mezzo-piano andante and largo pieces he whistled through his teeth. He was the only whistler I ever heard …
MAY 10, 2020 – Yesterday was Mom’s Day, so I couldn’t much talk about Dad, who’d died a decade ago yesterday. For the first year after his death, I dreamt about him every single night. Then, consistent with the tradition of so many cultures, my one-year of mourning was completed. Dad’s nightly appearance in my …
APRIL 30, 2020 – (Cont.) . . . For the past few days leading up to that fateful day, town road crews had been hard at work on the streets north of Rice, putting down a coat of oil, then a thin blanket of sand. On the day at hand, it was our street’s turn. …
APRIL 29, 2020 – I was but six when I witnessed my first power play—not as in hockey but as in one man pulling rank on another. It occurred at about 1:00 on a hot, beautiful summer afternoon. I know the time, because that’s when our neighbor, Bob Ehlen, would’ve been heading back to his …
APRIL 28, 2020 – Recently my wife observed that in these times the neighborhood sounds like the neighborhood of our childhood—ours, not our sons’. Young kids are playing outside, making lots of old-fashioned noise. My wife thinks this is good. I suppose so, except when I’m trying to read out on the porch and the …
APRIL 26, 2020 – Recently, down our alley I encountered our hotshot lawyer-neighbor sweeping furiously his garage floor—and immersing himself in a cloud of dust. I imagined him trying to destroy a hostile witness on cross-ex(amination). I also imagined my grandfather disapproving the way Mr. Hotshot was handling the broom. Born in 1895 Grandpa Holman …
APRIL 21, 2020 – Across the room from where I write this sits a globe mounted on a floor stand. The Western Hemisphere faces me, with South America in apogee. This proximity triggers a memory from kindergarten. My parents had planned a winter break family road trip from Minnesota, down along the Mississippi River to …
APRIL 11, 2020 – (Cont.) Göran edged his way down to a point where the ledge swung to the right, narrowed to nearly nothing, then bent left around the mountainside, out of sight a few feet before turning right again, coming back into view. I saw him clutch a small, rock formation at the bend, …
APRIL 10, 2020 – My daily breakfast fare includes blueberries. Each serving reminds me of the time I (nearly) fell from an airplane and (actually) landed in heaven—the largest patch of wild blueberries on earth. This defining event occurred two-thirds of the way through my Grand Odyssey around the globe. Years later, when my mother …
APRIL 6, 2020 – (Cont.) The next day came. My sister Jenny called from New York to give us a full report on the view from her family’s apartment. In the sitting room adjoining my wife’s book office, I put Jenny on speaker and chatted away. The conversation drew my wife from her office (her …
APRIL 3, 2020 – Social distancing now being imperative, I recall my encounter with its polar opposite. Thirty-nine years ago, in my callow youth, I saw fit to see India—alone, or so I thought. Naïveté, I soon learned, is an essential human trait—without it, wholly insane but totally wonderful things in life would never occur. …
DECEMBER 30, 2019 – No sooner had the full image taken shape, when disaster struck. Down I went, as if shoved violently into the snow and . . . How on such a cold day, after such a cold week, with everything frozen hard, could I be in . . . liquid water? This wasn’t …
DECEMBER 29, 2019 – Years ago an ice fisherman reportedly went through the ice on White Bear Lake, just north of St. Paul. What was remarkable about the story was: (1) It occurred after a two solid weeks of subzero temperatures; and (2) The guy had just augured a fishing hole through a foot and …
DECEMBER 24, 2019 – We knew him as Santa Claus, and indeed he was. As reliable as the calendar, Uncle Bruce would arrive a week before the Big Day. He flew on a night flight from Newark to the old terminal in Minneapolis, where Mother and Dad would pick him up. His arrival was past …
DECEMBER 20, 2019 – What’s as predictable as Christmas is the alacrity with which it arrives. Now. When I was a kid, the slow passage of time allowed me to savor the approach of the biggest holiday in American culture. When I was in second grade, our teacher, Mrs. Lundring, who seemed way past retirement …
DECEMBER 6, 2019 – A thousand years ago, or so it seems, I landed in what was then known as Bombay, India. I’d flown from Australia, where I’d been on the loose for the previous month, after the month before in New Zealand. Many of the European travelers I’d met “Down Under” had come via …