SEPTEMBER 15, 2025 – This morning brought ideal weather to the shores of Grindstone Lake. For a good two hours, I was in my Zen zone, working on the 2 x 12 x 81-inch reclaimed stringers that will be incorporated into my “Pergola-on-a-Platform” high up in the tree garden. After many weeks of sketching, measuring, re-measuring, drawing to scale, re-drawing to scale, second-guessing myself, then triple-guessing, I took the plunge. Well . . . not quite. I got ready to take the plunge. Just to quadruple-check my calibrations, I cut out a paper template and hiked up to the site and placed the template against the platform where I intend to fasten the stringers—once they’re fabricated. Only then was I certain my plans would work—assuming the accuracy of my sawing operation.
I was almost embarrassed, though no one was around to witness my hesitancy, my lack of confidence in my geometry, and for that matter, my simple arithmetic. (By having looked at the measuring tape upside down, had I mis-measured any of the cutlines to be made?) My reticence reminded me of swimming lessons that my mother forced me to take over at the Charles Horn Municipal Pool in Anoka.[1] The thing I hated most about them was the cold water—which seemed all the colder when the ambient temperature on a cool drizzling June day hadn’t yet climbed out of the low 60s. I was never the type who could just jump willy-nilly into the pool. I had to enter at the shallow end and tiptoe down the floor of the pool until the water was past my belly button. Even then I’d have to take two or three deep breaths while contemplating the impending shock before I could “go under.”[2]
With confidence gained by the paper template, I applied it to one of my 2 x 12 stringers, and with a good finishing saw, I made the precise cuts according to my plans. Next, I hauled the stringer all the way up to the pergola for the moment of truth. To my considerable delight, the stringer fit as perfectly as the stopper of a Waterford claret decanter. I could now cut the remaining stringers. Moreover, I could calculate the exact slope of the stringers—i.e. staircases—to take precise measurements for the treads and risers. I was on a roll.
I carried the tested stringer back down off “the mountain” to my workspace near the break in the shoreline berm by our main dock. The set-up was ideal. Everything around me—trees, lake, work area, even the warm breeze—seemed to be all smiles. I too was smiling—immersed in my project and knowing that having “made the plunge” with the stringers, I could now swim confidently the next few laps.
I could’ve worked all day and well into tomorrow, except . . . while Beth is sojourning in Ireland, I’d volunteered to pick up Illiana from school and take her to our house for her weekly online art class. I didn’t regret for a moment this commitment. Our almost 10-year-old granddaughter has me wrapped around her little finger, and as long as she does, I will adjust, defer, and circumvent other plans to whatever extent they impinge on “Illiana time.”
To arrive at school punctually, however, meant I had to leave our Shangri-La absolutely no later than 20 minutes past noon. Invariably, packing up for the drive to or from the lake becomes a reenactment of preparation for an 1840s covered wagon expedition on the Oregon Trail. What complicates matters is loading tools and lumber to be used in the pending project (currently, the aforementioned staircases to the platform portion of the “Pergola-on-a-Platform.”). On this occasion, however, I initiated the process well enough in advance not to be pressed and stressed.
With everything in the car, ready to go, I checked the time: 12:12. Before plugging my phone into the car phone jack, I conducted my usual mid-day check of news headlines. Big mistake. Suddenly, from my paradisical surroundings, I’d conveyed myself into the dystopia of our times. The lead story was about the guy who was shot recently in Utah. It concerned the terrible backlash against people who dare to say anything negative about the victim.
I was shaken, disturbed, worried. The objective reality is that while without exception, Republicans eulogize the guy, most of the rest of the country does not. Yet, despite the sacrosanctity of the First Amendment—until now—people who say anything negative about the Partisan’s Partisan are condemned, ostracized, threatened, and fired from their jobs and posts. “Negative” covers the entire gamut of Constitutionally protected speech, from the vile to poor taste to crass to puerile to valid criticism to thoroughly insightful examination. If the guy was in fact a veritable political rock star among his partisan followers and Christian nationalists, his celebrity stature among those crowds (to the extent a distinction exists between them) did not transform him into a universal recognized saint. In fact, he was perceived by many people as quite the opposite of a saint. Nonetheless, the Republicans, falling slavishly in line—yet again—behind their leader, choose to run blindly roughshod over the FIRST Amendment. Ironically, but also in mortal peril to the country, they would at the same time, enshrine the SECOND Amendment by making it the Eleventh Commandment and crow that since all law and all rights emanate from the (Christian) God, there’s no longer a need for a secular Constitution or “rule of (secular) law.”
And that, my friends, is how a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy has become a theocracy, where only rigid and unerring belief in the party line will save you, your continued education, your research grants (and cancer cures for the rest of us), your business, your law firm, your medical practice, your right to travel, your right to read classic literature, your right to speak your mind, your right to belong to the political party of your choice, the right to belong to the religion of your tradition (or no religion) and whatever sect or denomination thereof you choose, and your freedom from harassment, retribution, investigation, persecution and prosecution.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Charles Horn, CEO of Federal Cartridge, based in Anoka, was our town’s Citizen Kane. He’d donated the funds for construction of the city hall, firehouse, and public swimming pool on the other side of town. Who knows what concessions he obtained from the town in exchange—other than the larger-than-life-size full portrait of His Highness that was hung inside the city hall for all people to see. My dad told me years later that during the era of Anoka’s “benefactor,” nothing of any consequence happened without Mr. Horn’s blessing. “If you owned a store on Main Street,” Dad said, “and you wanted to change the outside colors from red and brown to blue and green, you didn’t dare do so without getting his consent ahead of time. And if you wanted to run for city council . . . you were assured of losing if you didn’t have his endorsement.”
[2] I never outgrew my dislike of cold water, but at least I learned to get the shock over with all at once and right up front.
