Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
JULY 28, 2021 – By appearances, my boyhood town, Anoka, Minnesota, was a provincial place at the confluence of the Rum and the Mississippi. Many of my grade school classmates were farm kids. Some came from homes without telephones. Many folks had been stuck in Anoka or its immediate environs for much too long. Their …
JULY 3, 2021 – My 05/15/21 post was entitled, “The Happiest Day in (This) Guy’s Life”—the day our new boat lift was relocated so that our new boat would float on and off the bunks. Now let me tell you about the saddest day in (this) guy’s life: the day before the biggest weekend of …
JUNE 13, 2021 – I want to be two things when I grow up: 1. Airline pilot; and 2. Sea captain. Meanwhile, I’m in training. My car works as an airplane, and I drive as if I’m a student pilot. This brings me pleasure at the same time it improves my concentration. On the water, …
MARCH 23, 2021 – Forty years ago this month I embarked on a solo trek around the world. Traveling alone, I was never lonely. Without today’s technology, I navigated via guidebooks, paper maps, and total strangers, whom I learned to size-up quickly by their eyes, posture, and corners of the mouth. Though I chose destinations—such …
MARCH 14, 2021 – Yesterday I lay low, wrapped in a blanket, watching Disney movies with my wife (to educate ourselves about our grand-daughter’s world), and just waiting it out. I was side-lined by the side-effects from my second vaccination the day before. Mind you, at no time did I regret the vaccination. (Get yours …
MARCH 4, 2021 – As my closest friends (and imaginary psychologist) know, for years my exercise regimen involves a weekly quota of a mile of vertical feet—stairs and hiking or skiing uphill. This works out to 750 feet a day, plus an extra 30 feet (called “leap feet”) per week. Much of my climbing occurs …
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 …
OCTOBER 5, 2020 – Yesterday I rose early to watch the sunrise, but what caught my attention was the bright moon in the west. Against the clear morning sky, earth’s constant companion was as clear as could be. I was so captivated by the sharp definition of its features, I forgot all about the sunrise. …
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 …
AUGUST 5, 2020 – While the rest of the world battled its way through another two days, my wife and I drove from Hamburg, Connecticut to Falcon Heights, Minnesota—1,345 miles, minus the mile to and from the highway and our overnight hotel. Total drive time: 21.5 hours inside total elapsed time of 45 hours. Such …
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 . . . …
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 18, 2020 – Daily for a fortnight I’ve been doing “deep breathing” exercises for meditative reprieve from anxiety. One of the exercises calls for sitting comfortably, eyes closed, and thinking of a word, five or six times, as you inhale, then another word, again repetitively, as you exhale. The selected words should relieve stress—like, …
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 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. …
JANUARY 17, 2020 – Undaunted, he worked doggedly for admission into another Polish university, less selective than Jagiellonian University, but nonetheless, boasting a top-flight history department. He labored under the tutelage of a legendary scholar/professor, and then made a second attempt at Jagiellonian University. He passed. (In a “small world” aside, my wife and I …
JANUARY 7, 2020 – We have good friends who are skiing beside the Matterhorn outside Zermatt, Switzerland. I’m envious, but I can’t begrudge good taste combined with good fortune. Sunday, I thought about our friends as I hiked to my own version of Switzerland and the Matterhorn. It was a rough go. Our alley was …
DECEMBER 17, 2019 – On Sunday evening I watched David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago. I’ve lost track, but it might have been the 12th time I’ve enjoyed the 1965 epic film directed by David Lean. It went on to become one of the biggest box office hits ever. For those who read my “thumbs up” review …
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 …
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 4, 2019 – TRAVELED NORTH FROM THE RED CABIN PARENTHESIS WHICH IS ALREADY NORTH COMMA BUT EVERYTHING IS DIRECTIONALLY RELATIVE PARENTHESIS STOP DROVE THROUGH ELK COUNTRY AND DOWN MANY TWISTING GRAVEL ROADS THROUGH VAST CHEQUAMEGON NATIONAL FOREST STOP DESPITE LOW CLOUDS, MIST AND RAIN WE HIKED SOME STOP OUR REWARD ON ONE TREK WAS A …
SEPTEMBER 14, 2019 – At 10:18 I zipped out the door and onto the elevator. Remembering I’d not brushed my teeth, I fished the last piece of peppermint gum from my briefcase. As the doors opened on the fifth floor, I just about mowed down a waiting passenger. She screamed. I apologized. On the ground …
SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 – A fortnight ago I’d bought online a NYC-Boston Amtrak ticket. The objective: to visit my sister Kristina and her husband, Dean. I’d received confirmation but hadn’t given it another look until . . . precisely 10:11 yesterday morning. A week before I’d made flight arrangements—Minneapolis/St. Paul to LaGuardia—with the return flight …
SEPTEMBER 10, 2019 – One view of humankind is that we’re a bunch of incompetent dolts. Another view is that we’re just the opposite. You might say, we’re like LaGuardia Airport. It can be your worst nightmare or, against, the odds, everything can turn out just fine. When my younger sister, Jenny, flew to LaGuardia …