AUGUST 11, 2026 – Not since my “Pergola-on-a-Platform” project last summer and fall have I been so intensely immersed in a whimsical endeavor as I am with the design and construction of my model sailboats. Today I added another two vessels to the collection, but what’s even more notable on the fleet-building front is that I’ve developed promising new assembly efficiencies.
This morning while luxuriating in the customer lounge at our local Hyundai dealer, waiting for my car’s oil change, I put actual work-work aside long enough to pull out my project notebook and jot down some notes and thoughts. I pictured all the parts of one of my models laid out on a table. Although I’d completed 10 boats, the order and method of assembly changed (for the better) with each of the set. While sitting there in the dealership lounge, I wanted to improve the assembly process further and record all the details in my notebook. Methodically, I considered every step and sub-step in the process and tried to devise improvements wherever possible. On a miniature scale (in keeping with my miniature sailboats), I felt as if I’d fallen under the spell of W. Edwards Deming, the famous American efficiency expert who advised Japanese enterprises rebuilding after WW II.
Eager to apply my latest “efficiencies,” I couldn’t wait to get back to our back porch, part of which has been transformed into a shipyard (in addition to the ones up at the cabin). Such a project as I’ve created out of wood scraps is effective therapy by the simple fact that working with fine wire, tiny knots and small pieces of pinewood is a complete distraction from all the nonsense that now occupies our political process as it ramps up for the elections just 85 days away.
I was doing just fine “rigging” my sailboats until early this evening, when I made the terrible mistake of scrolling through NYT headlines while feasting on a platter of seafood (what else, when building sailboats?). I settled on Thomas Friedman’s latest column. I’ve long found myself agreeing with Mr. Friedman on matters of the Middle East, and not just because he grew up in my home state of Minnesota. He’s as pragmatic as he is principled and broad-minded. And he strongly disapproves of Netanyahu.
His column today criticized my fellow Bowdoin alumnus, New York City Mayor Mamdani for arguing that Jews aren’t entitled to self-determination in a state of their own. By word count, however, Friedman’s heaviest criticism was reserved first for Hamas, then hurled upon AIPAC—the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group that supports Netanyahu unapologetically, as well as Trump, Republicans and evangelical Christians.
What was most disturbing about Friedman’s column, however, was the following one-sentence paragraph:
But because this is the only country I have, because the midterms will be razor close and because I am convinced that two more years of Donald Trump completely unchained—controlling the House, the Senate and tacitly the Supreme Court—could bring about the end of America as we have known it, I have to think about how to make the best of some not great choices.[1]
. . . what worries me now is Friedman’s prediction that the midterms will be “razor close.” If the midterms are “razor close,” our democracy’s survival will likewise be . . . “razor close.”
Meanwhile, it’s back to sea . . .
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Friedman went on to advise El-Sayed, winner of the Michigan Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, how not to lose the entire Jewish vote in the Michigan general election (stopping short of condemning him out of hand).
