Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
NOVEMBER 22, 2020 – With our world in turmoil (besides this being the anniversary of JFK’s assassination), there’s no dearth of topics for today’s post. For respite, therefore, I turn to something out of this world. I spent the past several days (and nights) at the Red Cabin. Whenever I’m there I see one wonder …
AUGUST 22, 2020 – Yesterday afternoon while deep in my “tree garden,” I heard the rumble of distant thunder. When I emerged for a look at the end of our dock, an enormous thunderhead was closing in. I felt like a sailor in one-person dinghy in line with the prow of an aircraft carrier steaming …
JULY 6, 2020 – I’m not a “math and science” guy, though in school I did just fine. It’s just that I didn’t advance very far. I was too busy being a “words” guy. Still am. No apologies. And my disclaimer regarding math and science doesn’t disqualify me from deploying words about a scientific concern. …
MARCH 13, 2020 – TRIGGER WARNING: In this post, I swear twice . . . Damnit! Time to treat The Virus for what it is: the biggest threat to our way of life since . . . take your pick of national crises. This could well be our Grand Duzy. My evidence? Italy, a country …
MARCH 12, 2020 – Tuesday evening I’d composed a post for Wednesday. Entitled, “BERNIE BURNIN’,” it lampooned CNN coverage of primary results Tuesday evening. By Wednesday morning it seemed trivial, irrelevant, and not very humorous. My daily voyage got struct by a rogue wave, within a sea-change inside a hurricane. For days I’d been on …
JANUARY 4, 2020 – If you haven’t seen images of Australia’s Armageddon, you drank too much holiday grog. Extreme drought and record high temperatures turned the “fire season” into cataclysmic devastation. Decades ago I spent a month in the region now in flames. It is—or was—packed with eucalyptus trees, vulnerable to fire given the high …
DECEMBER 13, 2019 – Several years ago I read Daniel Kahneman’s brain-altering book, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. No other book affected my thinking—however fast or slow—as much . . . . . . until I read The Misinformation Age by two philosophers of science, Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall. The text is only 186 …
NOVEMBER 7, 2019 – I’m lucky to have traveled round the globe, literally, crisscrossing oceans, continents, the equator, the Arctic Circle, the Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn. Whenever possible I’ve looked out the window of car, train, ship, and plane. On foot, bike or skis, I’ve peered as far and wide as I …
OCTOBER 30, 2019 – Yesterday after work-work, I worked raking leaves in our yard. In Minnesota, raking leaves means you’ll soon be shoveling snow. I thought about that as I raked a billion maple leaves into a gigantic pile. Dry, crinkly leaves are a piece of pumpkin pie when compared to shoveling snow onto four-foot-high …
OCTOBER 28, 2019 – Last week The New York Times carried an article about a recent find of mammalian fossils revealing how life bounced back after the demise of the dinosaurs. The article was a welcome respite from all the stories about human dysfunctionality aboard spaceship earth. After reigning over the earth for 165 million …
SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 – Our family has a favorite story, originating with my younger sister and featuring the word, “behave.” Actually, it’s two words. The tale goes like this . . . My sister Jenny was on an extended tour playing violin in the orchestra of an opera company. In a rather obscure and underserved …
AUGUST 5, 2019 – Gun control; immigration reform; student loan burdens; opioid crisis; arms sales to Saudia Arabia; support of Israel; relations with NATO allies; relations with Russia; relations with China; disease control; tariffs; war in Afghanistan; religious extremism; white nationalism; investment in public transit; transportation safety; affordable and accessible quality health care; storage of nuclear …
MAY 28, 2019 – This past weekend, my wife and I worked from dawn to dusk getting our cabin and grounds prepared for our younger son’s wedding late in August. In rain and shine we worked. En route home, I came up with this multiple choice test: Ultimately, what is ownership of a lake cabin? …