Friday evening my 88 year old Uncle and I went down the hall to visit his sister and my aunt in the Memory Care unit at the Nursing Home/Assisted Living facility in a small rural North Dakota community. It was a short trip, under a single roof. My Aunt, at 93, is most likely not […]
Last night I was returning from a meeting and happened across a portion of a speech President John F. Kennedy had given on this date, 50 years ago, one month before his death. The 24 minute speech, to the National Academy of Science, is archived on YouTube, accessible here. This is worth a reflective listen. […]
The ten days between Friday, October 11, and Monday, October 21, were fascinating ones for this, yes, “old-timer”. (I put those words in quotations because it’s all relative: the day I pass on, at whatever age that happens to be, there’ll be somebody who will have just said “he was just a kid”; on the […]
UPDATE Oct. 23, 2013: There are a half dozen comments to this post. They are included at the end. As I noted to one reader, I could have gone on at much greater length about this aspect, or that, of this most complicated topic, but chose to keep my thoughts somewhat brief. As is also […]
PRE-NOTES: Directly related to the below post is this one published two days ago, on “Conversation”. Overnight came a long and excellent rendering of what is happening in Washington now. The first three paragraphs of the post catch the essence. * “You cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours […]
Long-time journalist on politics, Eric Black, published a most interesting column in the October 7 MinnPost. Mr. Black has built a very strong positive reputation over many years as a reporter on politics in this region. He continues writing in retirement. Succinctly, Black watched the 14 minute interview of John Boehner by George Stephanopoulos Sunday, […]
NOTE: Permanent “file cabinet” on the Orchestra issue is here. Twenty-four hours before I found my seat at the Ted Mann Concert Hall Saturday evening October 5, I was at the closing reception at the Will Steger Exhibit at the Minnesota College of Art and Design. I was fascinated by the artifacts, and at 7:20 […]
September 21 I stopped for a few minutes in New London, MN, enroute to visit a retired colleague and friend in home hospice a few miles away. I hadn’t seen Mary in a long while – I’m long retired, and she lives a two hour drive away, off my normal “beaten path”. But there are […]
Perhaps it is no more than a coincidence, but four events in particular draw my attention to varied initiatives relating to the Earth and its Peoples. 1. Tomorrow is the last day of an exhibition of the Minnesota College Art and design of some of the artifacts of renowned Arctic and Antarctic Explorer Will Steger. […]
This morning, last I heard, one of our five “outlaws” (one of their children is married to one of our children) gets on a plane in Minneapolis, flying to Washington D.C., for a reunion planned a year ago with several friends from the husbands Army days together in Vietnam times. They are from all over […]