In Jakarta they always checked our cars for explosive devices. I assume it was all the cars and not just the ones I was in. The high-end hotels took up whole city blocks and had walls and gates. So, you were driven up and they did the old once over with mirrors on poles, walking around the car and scanning... READ MORE >
In a story, the moral comes at the end. In an essay, the thesis is stated at the beginning. Being creative with rules like these fosters art. Or confusion. This is how it was for me: When I finally got my driver’s license, I was able to use my mother’s car. That was an Oldsmobile Omega, a brownish maroon, frontwheel... READ MORE >
One of the first “Outdoors” columns I wrote for the Cook County News Herald two years ago found me splitting wood in the late winter as the snow receded. It was, then, my favorite time of year to split; nice to attack stacks of rounds, split them by hand, move them by toboggan, and stack them for firewood. It’s mid-January... READ MORE >
There’s no joy in Mudville. Rather, there’s no joy in Crudville, with the cold and snow and wind of January. It snowed, and the snowblower was on the fritz, and it snowed twice more before I got it up and running, and then it was on the fritz again. We are into a face cord of firewood now that got... READ MORE >
Sometimes for no apparent reason Foxy, under the bed or with me on the bed, will wake up or lift her head and bark quickly, then growl. She can smell or hear the deer moving through the clearing. I lift my head to look out the small window, but at night there’s just blackness and in daylight the hoarfrost covers... READ MORE >
Just about six months later then it was mid-winter and white and cold, and I turned my Escort left, northbound, onto County Road 69, and later I thought how much I liked it that North Road was 69. That was the old Escort on which I learned about alternators and brakes and coils and spark plugs but learned quite poorly.... READ MORE >
Part 1: We were young at the time and only occasionally acting like adults. It was the end of our summer and I suppose we were marking it with a weekend away. We two had worked the summer on the mall on campus in the city. She lived off Hennepin in Uptown and I lived off Hennepin on the other... READ MORE >
The old Saigon Zoo is located at one end of the great French-colonial presidential boulevard, some few city blocks up from the old U.S. embassy, which was fortified to keep the Viet Cong out and the South Vietnamese in. On April 30th, 1975, Chinese-made Soviet T-54 tanks rolled onto the boulevard, some approaching the embassy with guns up towards the... READ MORE >
Heritage? We don’t take heritage too seriously. For some of our Scandinavian ancestors it would be sinful to take ourselves too seriously (but some of us did, devil-may-care). For the Celtic and Teutonic ancestors, it’s probably better off for everyone that we don’t take it none too seriously. There was a mass-market hardcover bestseller back in the 90s, “How the... READ MORE >
I’m not sure why I find it hard to use the word ‘home.’ I mean for myself, as in mine. I suppose a trapper’s shack – one small room with a low ceiling, a heavy door, and two small windows – was never meant to be a home, only a temporary, seasonal shelter. Not a trapper’s home for any trapper... READ MORE >
