This afternoon Donna Elling, 88, will be remembered at First Universalist Church in south Minneapolis. We’ll be there, and I expect there’ll be a large crowd. She richly deserves a tribute. I can’t say I knew Donna well, except through others voices and memories. When I met her and her husband, Lynn, five years ago, […]
The weekend just past was hot, at least as for us in this area. The temperature was in the low 90s till Sunday night rainfall moderated it. Some of our grandkids were involved in post-school year athletic activities. Over at the local high school, first-grade Ben competed in several events, including successfully passing the baton […]
As it happened, Tuesday morning June 5 came an unexpected phone call from one of my relatives in Wisconsin. Marion, 95, called to say that her nephew, Dave, had died on Sunday at age 77 “and the funeral is tomorrow at 10:30 in Hazel Green”. They had misplaced my phone number and don’t do computer, […]
I’m writing this post before the polls close in Wisconsin. I haven’t heard any predictions, or talk of the turnout, or any such thing. So the post-mortem won’t be in this post. There’ll be plenty of those without me…. Love it or not, Scott Walker is the face of the contemporary Republican Party in the […]
Today is election day in Wisconsin; five months from today is the United States General Election. There is a serious question embedded in the following: how do we change American political warfare before we are all – winners and losers and, indeed, country – lying dead in the weeds? The past couple of generations of […]
UPDATE June 1, 2012: I posted the below on Tuesday May 29, and there are quite a number of comments at the end. This is an election with far more than routine long-term implications, far beyond “right” vs “left”, “conservative” vs “liberal” or “union” vs “right to work”. This one, with “divide and conquer” to […]
SEVERAL UPDATES, INCLUDING PHOTOS at end of this post. I’m at the age where death is an increasingly regular visitor to my circles. This Memorial Day three deaths come to mind. The first came when I was 1 1/2 years old, when my Uncle Frank Peter Bernard went down on the USS Arizona at Pearl […]
Last Friday I took a four day one thousand mile trip related to family matters in North Dakota. The trip included a visit to an Aunt and Uncle and a drive to a family funeral near the Canadian border. Over half of the trip was by myself, which always makes a trip seem longer, at […]
Monday my wife and I were enroute “between here and there” and I suggested we stop in at Maplewood Toyota as we might be in the market for another car. The stop was a logical one: we’ve purchased four cars there, the most recent one 7 years ago, all from the same salesman who’s very […]
A couple of weeks ago I attended the memorial service for a former colleague of mine. He was 78 when he died, and the memorial service was in a small city outside the twin cities area. John had been my colleague for 24 years. I didn’t know him well, as we were among about 40 […]