The Cheap Seats

 I am not a winter person. Oh sure, it looks beautiful. The pristine white cover and snowflakes falling to the ground lend a festive air to the season. But beyond that, winter is dead to me. The worst two words in the English language, wind chill , are just about enough to drive me to my knees.  I wasn't always this way. The first twelve years of my life were filled with sledding, snowballs, and snow forts. Back then, digital frostbite wasn't something to avoid, it was something to endure....the cost of doing business with winter. Yes, I've heard the suggestions—try ice fishing, snowmobiling, etc. No thanks, sounds awful. I did take up downhill skiing about ten years ago, but discovered the warmth of the lodge was much more inviting than the meager sixty second run down the hill after a five minute chairlift ride up it (the price of living in a very flat part of the country).    In the last couple of years, I've seriously considered taking up cross-country skiing. Un...

A good friend died last Thursday, a profound shock. The days since then have been just that, a daze , filled mostly with thoughts of his absence. If I were a younger man, I doubt I'd be ruminating on the nature of death and loss as much, just one of the many prices we pay for growing older, I suppose. And like so many of life's unplanned moments, death seems to be one of those things that come at us in waves, with long intervals in between where these stinging waters recede and leave us in peace. Of course, these interludes shrink as we get older, perhaps nature's way of steeling us for the coming years that are more filled with sorrow than we could have realistically borne in the sunnier days of our youth. He was a good man, my friend. Unfailingly generous, quick with a joke and imbued with an unwaveringly positive spirit, he was a tonic to every person who knew him. And now that he is suddenly gone (and far too soon), those he left behind—his family, the love of his life,...

I feel very fortunate that there were a number of teachers I had during my childhood who made a real difference in my young life. Naturally, they probably never knew this, as the lessons they passed on were only recognizable with the passing of many years. One of those teachers was William Meisner, who passed away last week at the grand old age of 94. Mr. Meisner taught English in his 30+ years at Carlton High School, though I dare say  Shakespeare  was probably his favorite. I had the good luck to be in the last Shakespeare class Mr. Meisner ever taught in the Spring of 1984, his final year at CHS. He was unforgettable. Even now I can see him at his desk reading one of the parts from any number of plays, his hands gesturing, his chin jutting out, his words transformed by the characters he portrayed. In a bold move on my part, I tracked Mr. Meisner down to a Cloquet nursing home two summers ago because  I wanted to give him a copy of the book I wrote, Addie Braver . In th...

*Fair warning...this is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but it is an entirely TRUE STORY. At the very least, you will be disgusted. Your nose and upper lip will scrunch together involuntarily, trust me. Okay, now that I have your attention, let us begin. I've used a good deal of headspace in the last ten months trying to put my finger on just the right metaphor to summarize the year that we all just crawled through. A ship and an iceberg came to mind, but was quickly rejected as being too obvious. The relationship between science and masks seemed appropriate, but was also discarded because it was (sadly) not obvious enough.  So, as this year of misery mercilessly churned towards its ending, I gave up my search. The blogosphere would have to do without the musings of one more middle-aged blowhard. I know...tragic, right? And then, in two parts, it happened. For Part 1, let's rewind a few months back to late September. A good friend and I (masked and distanced, so save y...

'Twas a month before inauguration in the great white North, Where Santa could be found pacing back and forth. You see, the old guy had just received an odd, angry note, From a strange orange man raging about some "unfair" vote. Letters should be from children , Santa distractedly mused, Not grown ass men, bitter about who the voters had choosed. Besides, Kris Kringle wondered , peering through his bifocal glasses, These words are unreadable, did this bozo fail all his classes? Still, St. Nick sat down figuring, Oh, what the heck, I've got a few minutes to read some of this dreck. After all , he chuckled, taking a long sip of his cocoa, A letter from an adult is nice, though this one seems loco . "I won by a lot!" it began. "The election wasn't even close!" And other false claims, all crazy and bellicose. "If those ballot counters had the right priorities, They would have tossed out the votes of those ethnic minorities!" Old Claus chok...

* Our great abiding national myth is this: We are a chosen people who threw off the yoke of our colonial oppressors to forge a new nation out of the wilderness by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, rugged individualists who tamed a continent through sheer grit and determination. A meritocracy where anyone, no matter their color or creed, can rise as far as their talent and gumption takes them. Furthermore, we have welcomed "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from the far-flung nations around the globe.  Here,  we told them,  here in America is where you too can taste a freedom that grows nowhere else on Earth.  This myth suggests a unity of purpose that utterly belies basic human nature. We are a savage species; distrusting, selfish, greedy, wasteful, often barbaric. Our " better angels " are almost exclusively reserved for people who belong to our same tribe, whether that tribe be religious, political, or ethnic in nature—more often than not some combina...

  I grit my teeth all the time now. Don’t you? I didn’t always, but when everything about existence that I used to reliably count on got flipped on its head, what’s a guy to do?   Don’t get me wrong, I have never been an unwavering, Love it or Leave it "patriot" about the United States of America. Far from it. As a lifelong student of its history, I can find all of its warts, scabs, and cancers with a critical eye. Kind of sucks, actually. You see, we’re a two-steps forward, one-step back kind of nation. We always have been. Broadly shared gains seem to always be followed by bitter, aggrieved setbacks. Emancipation leads to Jim Crow, Civil Rights spawns White Citizens’ Councils, Barack Obama is succeeded by Donald Trump. Our “better angels” have been taken to the woodshed time and time and time again. All pessimism aside, I still believe what Dr. King espoused, that “ the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice .” The ongoing struggle he spelle...

I love American history. As a child I couldn't get enough of it, specifically mass movements that were ultimately about American Progress —stories of men and women who fearlessly advanced noble causes that inspired and empowered their fellow citizens for generations to come. You know who they are, the ones we've named schools and streets after. I don't mean to be glib; I'm just deeply discouraged. It comes with adulthood I suppose, along with the realization that American Progress has never been a steady march forward—that for every legal and moral stride this nation has taken, some noxious legislative obstruction and petty grievance has stood in the way, the overarching goal (crafted by some frightened, shrinking base of power) being to maintain a status quo that is deeply rooted in racial inequality, be it in housing, employment, education, criminal justice or treatment in police custody. You know, those pursuit of happiness things that the armed (and un-arrested) Mi...

     A global pandemic gives an introvert more time to think than is good for him. Thoughts, ideas, and grand plans zip in and out of my mind long before my cat ever receives her first feeding. Soon after, coffee soothes whatever "pressing" tasks were on my mental to-do list and I settle on an insignificant few each new day.       We're sort of wired for these times. Introverts, I mean. Observers by nature, we have always mentally exhaled after long days at work or at play. Don't get us wrong, we love humanity, but in order to do it all over again tomorrow, we need to re-charge in the company of only a few, or none. Trust me, the introvert in you (or in your life) is nodding.      The one consistent thought that hasn't left me however, is, "I am one of the lucky ones." I suppose that's why I've kept my head down since the lockdown began. Keep your mouth shut, I remind myself from the comfort of home.  No one wants to hear yo...

Every May, June and July for the past decade, I have filled my time umpiring a lot of baseball and softball games. The one guaranteed result from all of these active evenings has been that I sleep pretty well for three months out of the year. No big surprise, just simple math. But all that fresh air reminds me how much better humanity used to sleep than we do in this silly century. Though life was physically more challenging in the past, people undoubtedly slept longer and harder than we do today. After all, they had to. Manual labor was much more the rule than the exception in daily life. Fast-forward to today. The forty hour work week demands very little of us physically. Consequently, we toss and turn at night, our minds occupied by a world that our ancestors would collectively eyeroll at.  I'm not saying life was better "back in the day." I am quite content with all of the modern, time-saving devices that keep my hands callous-free. But I can't help not...

A few weeks ago, at the same time I was lamenting the sheer amount of trash we humans deposit on the side of the road (among other places), I was listening to Michael Jackson's pre- Thriller album, Off the Wall. Because I connect a lot of music to different times of my life, I quickly calculated that Off the Wall was a monster album throughout the entirety of my 7th grade year. Before he was ever called The King of Pop , a very young Michael Jackson churned out hits like Don't Stop 'Til You get Enough, Rock With You, Off the Wall, and She's Out of My Life . The songs were great then, they're great now. And regardless of the late singer's alleged (or confirmed) abhorrent, criminal behavior, I will continue to listen to his music. Is that wrong? Ken Burns seminal documentary on the American Civil War was broadcast on PBS in the fall of 1990. That nine-part series held me spellbound over the course of two weeks, launching me into a decade of intense read...

I used to be one of those nutty, daily runners. You know the type—always worrying and wondering when he/she will squeeze in a four-miler, meanwhile disrupting everyone else's schedule.  Insufferable, really. All that changed about five years ago when I (mis)diagnosed some mild but constant hip pain as sciatica. Naturally, another year went by before I visited my doctor (the last time I've been to a clinic, as I recall). He took an x-ray and drew some blood (no doubt because I had insurance) and concluded that I was arthritic in my left hip. You could have knocked me over with a shoelace. "You're going to have find some other form of aerobic exercise," he commented nonchalantly, completely misreading an obsessive runner. "Like what?!" I replied, much too harshly.  "Have you tried walking?" The transition to walking wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound. A grudging acceptance eventually took hold—an acknowledgement that I was no...