This is a parable. It’s a warning. It’s a piece of advice. It’s the truth. I went to a store today that specializes in electronics. They sell anything related to everything you can plug in or charge or turn on and off and all of those electronic devices are becoming more and more complicated and…
Today I felt so verklempt. You know the feeling. Even if you’re not Scandinavian. I got an idea. I attached a set of rabbit ear antennas to my manual typewriter, just behind the platen where it wouldn’t interfere with the keys and by golly. What a difference it makes. I’ve got another idea. ƒ
We lost Ole day before yesterday. Tuesday. One year to the week after we brought him home. A Bernese Mountain Dog rescued from a derelict property in the presence of adults who didn’t feed him because, “He wasn’t our dog.” He weighed forty-six pounds at one year of age. He should have weighed eighty. When…
My father said to me, “Stay off motorcycles. Stay out of bars.” After I bought my motorcycle I said to my father, “One out of two ain’t bad.” I rode my motorcycle Thursday. I had not ridden for over a year. I had not taken it out for that length of time and had my…
This happened years ago. It took ten years to happen the first time and now it has been forty-one years more. They add up, but its the same story retold as it will be for others in their time. It’s the same story. I lived on a farm in Iowa and it took me ten…
Here’s what I want you to understand. Let’s see if I can make it clear. On a busy thoroughfare headed downhill the wrong way in traffic a city dump truck, one of the big ones, broke down. Loaded with dirt and brush, equipped with a hydraulic boom and a claw big enough to…
Let me cross the line. The one you drew for me out there somewhere. Way up ahead. Not the one you drew for others. Not their limits or their exploits. The one true line made for me with my name on it. Let me hit it running and run beyond way beyond a winner. ƒ
Today just a few moments ago I sat outside listening to the birds singing outside the way they do when summer is promised and spring is here and winter is gone. They sang together. Him and Her. Them together. Back and forth in ecstasy of their sort in the trees up high and I listened.…
Once upon a time in a place far, far away I walked into a department store with my parents and they had a man playing piano on the sales floor. They did things like that in those days, days of civilization and culture before American began to drag the bottom of the barrel in pursuit…
Winter is the king of Wisconsin. Winter is owner of all the land and all the people, a grim, solemn magistrate with moments of mercy and warmth in modest portion, but majestic and terrible in power and authority. Trees drop their leaves in annual submission, paying tax for their lives, offering all the bright color…
