Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2025 – (Cont.) At the outset of my Pergola-on-a-Platform project, I’d scoped out a site inside the 20-acre (give or take) tree garden behind the lake frontage. I sought the intersection of three geographic features. The first was one of the trails that crisscross the garden. I imagined that the pergola platform would …
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 …
JULY 16, 2025 – Yesterday, as I drove down our winding drive and drew closer to the lake, the stiff breeze played whirlybird with every single leaf in the dense vegetation along my way. At first the fluttering leaves looked as if they were hanging on for dear life, but then I began to see …
JULY 14, 2025 – Back to Project Zen. Over the weekend I reverted to “Zen mode.” I had to. I mean, with everything from tariff terror to the Epstein Files crowding the hourly news cycle, one must seek refuge where one can. My sanctuary is currently “Project Zen,” to which I’ve now assigned the label, …
JULY 11, 2025 – (Cont.) I’ve always had a fondness for graph paper. It invites a disciplined approach to the transition between conceptualization and materialization of a building project. It fills gaps in mental images, drawing the possible from the improbable. In the case of Project Zen, graph paper captures with precision, proportions imposed by …
JULY 10, 2025 – (Cont.) Most building projects, whether large or small, follow a logical sequence. You start with an objective, be it a new house or a recycling box to be placed outside the new—or old—house. Next, plans are drawn up (in the case of the house) or sketched out (depicting the recycling box). …
JULY 8, 2025 – I’ve written before about the “zen of cabin projects”—dock installation (and re-installation), for instance, and other endeavors involving a degree of design and engineering and requiring use of a variety of tools that can easily become dangerous if mishandled. Anyone who owns a cabin and likes DIY construction knows what I’m …
OCTOBER 18, 2024 – Last spring in a three-part series—Zen and the Art of Dock Installation (See 5/12 through 5/14)—I described my engineering project up at the lake. Today I reverse-engineered it. That is, I took out the dock and staircase that I had so carefully installed last May. I’m 70, mind you, which means …
MAY 30, 2024 – In his recent commencement address at Brandeis University, Ken Burns imparted exceptional wisdom in prose that bordered on poetic. One pearl among the many reflected the famous documentarian’s relationship with nature. He encouraged the graduates to . . . Be in nature, which is always perfect and where nothing is binary. …
MAY 14, 2024 – (Cont.) Saturday’s nearly six hours of heavy labor left me feeling as I had every time after skiing the 52km American Birkebeiner Ski Marathon. I was so utterly exhausted, my walk was down to a shuffle. I was afraid to lie down for fear I wouldn’t be able to get back …
MAY 13, 2024 – (Cont.) Although I know the basic rules of chess, I’m no chess player, and on the few occasions when I’ve humored an actual chess player among extended family members, my lack of skill has become evident within my first three moves. Yet I have an immense appreciation for chess, which, as …
MAY 12, 2024 – Blogger’s Note: This post is yet another interruption of The Neighbors series. The title of this immediate post (and tomorrow’s) is a reference to Maynard Pirsig’s philosophical discourse in chronicling his “oneness” with a motorcycle on a wind-in-his face trip across big sky country of the American West. Likewise, “Zen and the …
AUGUST 10, 2022 – Like Tony the Tiger in the old Frosted Flakes TV commercials, I feel G-g-g-g-r-r-r-e-e-a-t! Yet the feeling gnaws at me: If I feel so great, why must I soon feel so “crappy”? I refer to my upcoming cancer treatment, of which you’re about to read a lot—assuming you’ll follow my blog. …
AUGUST 7, 2022 – Blogger’s note: Because “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date,” I’ve had to defer until tomorrow, the second part of “Men’s Shoes.” Don’t worry, however. The piece is already in the (shoe) bag. Also, for today’s post, I’ve given myself special dispensation and lifted my self-imposed limit on the …
AUGUST 6, 2021 – Yesterday we roamed the local scene just up river from Old Saybrook. Of all the scenes, shops, and people we encountered, none beat the junk store along a sleepy stretch of a lazy route. Stacked, strewn, and leaning outside were things large and small, rusted and peeling, collected from who-knows-where-or-when. After …
JULY 27, 2021 – Yesterday, I visited our good friends Jack and Linda in their Japanese garden—a national treasure. They themselves are a national treasure. (See 7/27/2019 post, “It is Zen.”) Two years later, the world has changed, but Jack and Linda’s Japanese garden still provides respite from that wild world. As we sat in …
JULY 23, 2021 – By last summer’s end, gnome homes had proliferated throughout our neighborhood. Captivated by these whimsically works, I joined the fad. I made two gnome homes and started a third. Winter halted construction, but while my building materials—natural “finds” from our woods—were in hibernation under the Red Cabin porch, I “built” gnome …
JULY 27, 2019 – Thursday evening my wife and I spent four hours in and around a work of art, hosted by our dear friends, the artists themselves, Jack and Linda Hoeschler of St. Paul. They are not artists in the way most people think of artists, and I doubt Jack or Linda would ever …