During Tet we had two weeks and more off. As we approached the holiday the class sizes dwindled, and after the two weeks were over, there was really no hard start to the classes again. For Tet, I would travel from Saigon to the Mekong Delta to be with my adopted Vietnamese family. The distance was six hours by motorbike... READ MORE >
This was my inheritance, but there are many caveats in calling this my inheritance. It is not my inheritance alone, but ours, my brother’s and mine and the Gen- Xers in our family, who have all profited from the values and hard work and education of our grandparents and great-grandparents. The inheritance was not this shack really, but a thin... READ MORE >
This pup (Canis lupus familiaris) is around 27 months old. She weighs about 40 pounds, and though she is short in stature, she is thick of muscle and bones. She stands twelve-and-a-half inches tall at the withers. Her name is Daphne and she is a cocker Spaniel, an English cocker Spaniel. Spaniels, obviously, started as Spanish hunting dogs. Daphne is... READ MORE >
My maternal grandmother was laid to rest in the cemetery between Almelund and Taylor’s Falls, in the flat plateau above the St. Croix River valley. She was 92 years old, and she was cremated. There were some words from a clergyman-for-hire (who pronounced her name wrong) and from some family members, from my aunt and mother and even my father.... READ MORE >
Spring is here and it’s time to take stock. First came the pussy willows (genus Salix), which volunteer around the clearing. As the snow recedes the seedling evergreens appear and it is a good time to measure their total growth from last season, their lead and in the five splayed branches. But with the snow receding, moving around the property,... READ MORE >
I first started learning to read the water on the St. Croix River, upstream of Stillwater, and upstream of Taylor’s Falls and St. Croix Falls. That was like reading a book in very large print and with pictures. So, you could see the slow waters of the sand flats where muskies hunted, and the slow, dark pools where the walleye... READ MORE >
Tolstoy, in one of his incarnations just past midlife, described his own as “the philosophy of the swamp.” A philosophy of real, tangible, practical things. So earthly a philosophy as to get one dirty. So thick and deep as to frighten. Maybe so gassy and decomposed as to be repugnant. What was the purpose of such a philosophy? I suppose... READ MORE >
My favorite – or one of my favorites – as a kid was kick the can. I think of it now because I associate it with the early spring when it was not winter finally; in the longer, later evenings under the cool dark skies with the faint stars and the moon and the roads – that is, streets –... READ MORE >
“If you want to get geese,” my old man would say, “do what the goose hunters do: go to where the geese are.” Motor out on a big lake and look to where the other boats are. Get onto a lake in winter and look where all the ice houses are; if there are no other houses or fisherman, look... READ MORE >
That was the year that Cong Tuyen and Le Huynh Duc played for the National Team. After Cong Minh, the prodigy from the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, Huynh Duc was Vietnam’s greatest footballer. He was tall for a Vietnamese, and skilled and powerful. He was the first Vietnamese player to be good enough to play abroad, first in... READ MORE >
