Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
NOVEMBER 30, 2025 – Over the past week, my wife and I have become well acquainted with our two-year-old grandson’s expanding toy collection. As I’ve already noted, he’s well into his truck phase, which includes a full complement of cranes, plows, dozers, and excavating machines. He also plays hard with his Duplos and waxed cardboard …
NOVEMBER 20, 2025 – The man looked about my age, maybe older, since he was engaged in a way that I would ascribe to someone who was fully retired and, well, definitely older than I am. He was wearing headphones and waders with a skirt of pouches and moving slowly in waters just beyond the …
NOVEMBER 12, 2025 – When I was a kid, Dad bought a fancy-shmancy lawn sweeper to replace the rake that he’d used every previous fall. It was from Sears Roebuck, which meant he had to assemble it himself. I remember watching him pull the parts out of a large cardboard carton labeled, “Craftsman” and assemble …
NOVEMBER 10, 2025 – Yesterday I partook in one of life’s great pleasures—in the pleasant company of our 10-year old granddaughter, attending a concert of masterpieces performed by world class musicians. It was somewhat of a last-minute operation. One of my sisters had asked me Thursday if I’d be interested in joining her and our …
NOVEMBER 6, 2025 – Today Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that beginning Friday, commercial flights in the U.S. will be reduced by 5,000 a day each day until 10% of pre-reduction volume is achieved. The ultimate impetus for this action is the government shutdown. As I watched the 10-second clip of Mr. Duffy delivering his …
OCTOBER 23, 2025 – No person alive knows for sure when and why Mother developed her “nervous tic,” as my sisters and I learned to call it, because that’s what Mother herself called it. Given her glamorous appearance in her high school yearbook picture and the photos that graced her and Dad’s wedding album—not to …
OCTOBER 19, 2025 – (Cont.) I’m sure I could’ve coaxed some meaningful cash out of Timothy in exchange for what was a work of shop art. In the moment, however, I decided to let him have it, gratis. In the first place, no one in the family would ever use the bulky machine, and eventually, …
OCTOBER 17, 2025 – (Cont.) At exactly the appointed time, an older burgundy RAM-Tough pick-up pulling a small trailer pulled up to the cabin. Out stepped a couple of guys from the reservation. The driver introduced himself as “Timothy,” with whom I’d spoken twice by phone to make arrangements. His handshake exuded confidence and character. …
OCTOBER 16, 2025 – Today the past was the present. By way of background, late this morning I drove up to the Red Cabin/Björnholm to meet a prospective buyer of miscellaneous old equipment that has been parked/stored at Björnholm for years beyond accurate count by anyone in the family. My brother-in-law Chuck had tentatively sold …
OCTOBER 2, 2025 – (Cont.) Our family’s weekend routine back in those days was to leave for the lake as soon as I arrived home from work and changed out of my “lawsuit,” as our older son, Corydon, called my sartorial norm. To hasten our departure, Beth would have the car packed and ready to …
OCTOBER 1, 2025 – Progressive Insurance has long entertained us with a brilliant ad campaign featuring the fictitious “Dr. Rick,” who conducts seminars to help new homeowners avoid turning into their parents. Of course, we Boomers, especially, laugh at these vignettes because they remind us of ourselves—and our parents. Today while working on the cabin …
SEPTEMBER 27, 2025 – Fifty years from now, historians studying our era will try to tease out the underlying ingredients and catalysts and analyze their interactions. I say 50 years, because as the great German historian, Leopold von Ranke (1795 – 1886) purportedly advocated, no history worth reading can be written without the perspective of …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2025 – Yesterday, for anticipated entertainment value akin to watching the trailer for the latest blockbuster monster movie, I Googled “Charlie Kirk funeral.” As with a horror film, I had no intention—or stomach—for watching anything besides brief excerpts, especially when I saw the duration of the production digitally-displayed in the corner—over five (!) …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2025 – Among other books I’m currently reading, I’ve been chipping away at a travel guide that my wife had picked up at a thrift shop many years ago and that had somehow resurfaced recently. It’s called, Asia Overland – A Practical Economy – Minded Guide to the Exotic Wonders of the East …
AUGUST 30, 2025 – (Cont.) My second memorable experience with an invalid assumption occurred two years later. By way of background . . . I was still very much embattled over the violin: my parents wanted me to study it seriously, whereas I wanted nothing to do with it. But by now things had gotten …
AUGUST 29, 2025 – Life nowadays, it seems, is a grand tour through the land of false assumptions, from RFK, Jr’s nonsense science to the Pyrite President’s belief that all that glitters is gold, even if it’s not even fool’s gold but painted plastic and marked “Made in China.” But I must say that my …
AUGUST 21, 2025 – I have a friend who’s fond of saying, “No one is an A-student at everything.” What he means is that no one can master everything in this complex world of ours. I’ve found this to be true of most people I know, including the A+ students at one thing or another …
AUGUST 20, 2025 – Today “UB” would’ve turned 102. He didn’t do too bad in the longevity column, having lived just 44 days shy of 95. I remember exactly where I was when I received the call—walking down a broad corridor of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, awaiting a flight back to the U.S. A hospice …
AUGUST 11, 2025 – Yesterday our grandson turned two. The occasion was celebrated by a crowd of well-wishers around the long table on the porch of the Red Cabin. He is of the fifth generation of Nilssons to enjoy the beauty of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin. Everyone showered him with smiles and attention as …
AUGUST 10, 2025 – Today our crew—Cory and family, Byron and family, Beth and I—took an extended lake cruise aboard Northern Comfort. After steaming the long diagonal from home port to the channel into Little Grindstone, thence west-southwest along what I call the “Barbary Coast,” I changed course toward the islands in the southwest. Very …
AUGUST 9, 2025 – The gathering had been in the works for a while. Our immediate family (and our sons’ families) would spend a few precious days this month at the Red Cabin on the northwest shore of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin. Joining us would be Kumar[1] and Emma, close friends of Byron and …
JULY 23, 2025 – This morning right up to noon, darkening clouds marched overhead to the command of Notus, Greek god of the south wind. The air was so laden with humidity, a heavy sweat covered the stepping stones along the pathway arching from our porch door around to the lake. Such conditions were the …
JULY 22, 2025 – Today I joined the kickoff meeting of the planning committee for my 50th college class reunion. When I’d volunteered a while back, I naively assumed that I’d be among 10 or 12 classmates following an inner group of half a dozen leading the charge. In fact, so many people have joined …
JULY 13, 2025 – This afternoon I received a call from Erik Ibele. I hadn’t heard from him in several years and was pleasantly surprised when he announced himself. He’d called to inform me that his father, Warren E. Ibele, had died recently. Warren would have turned 101 next month. Erik and his three siblings, …
JULY 6, 2025 – My good friend Jeffrey Oppenheim. was among the small group that founded the Falmouth [MA] Jewish Congregation in that vibrant Cape Cod community. Today 300 households are among the membership of what has become a robust, dynamic organization, with an impressively educated and experienced staff, a broad palette of educational programs …