A series of small essays
Motley Peg
NEW! Lady, Sing the Blues
Today’s joy, of the street music variety. An older woman rhythmically walking a pitbull down a park path this morning, a little strut to it, the...
Wittering On
As are many in these merry days, I am re-considering my relationship with the incessant yammering of the body politic. How to stay in proper balance...
A Million Dollars in Aisle 4!
Before I saw this sign, I had started an essay about business branding versus business personality, about how it seems that the first can be...
HBD, Chloe the Sloth!
I’m going to a birthday celebration this month. It’s for a sloth. You can come, too; it is open to the public! Lovely Chloe is turning 21. Chloe...
Stop the Train! Was That A Rocket Ship?!
I always carry books on a train, in case my attention to the scenery outside the train flags. A book would offer the opportunity to step away into...
The Red Arrow Highway and the Fourth of July
I was today years old when I figured out that my grandparents had told me a story that is apparently not true. In my slow summery childhood, I...
The Catalpa Are In Bloom Again
In the abundant summer, mature trees unveil themselves in all their power, ferociously alive, brilliantly vigorous and stretching up. Those that...
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
My bookshelves are crowded, and I sometimes think about off-loading, purging, thinking in passing “well, I’ll never read that again.” Then I wake...
Landmark Trees in a Landmark Yard
It’s May, and this northern city is finally greening. The buildings, the built world, are the same, but the infrastructure of trees, dozing during...
Downtown Living in the Capitol City
It’s almost axiomatic now to think unpleasantly about downtowns. They’re this, they’re that, they’re the other thing. Unappealing, worsening. ...
Incident of the Irish Music Box
This time of year, I can become a touch weary with the wearing o’ the green. The sweeping and wonderful Irish folkloric culture seems a bit, well,...
A Bed Event, and A Cat
I had an event the other night with our adjustable bed. I have re-written that sentence four times so far. I had an encounter. An incident. A...
Snollygoster
There are some had-been-going-moribund terms reappearing in our daily discourse over the last few years. Grifter. Shyster. Flim-flam man. There is...
I Follow Eva
There are so many fine ways to spread joy. When the days are short and cold, without even a softening layer of snow, it is good policy, survival...
Winter Trees
It’s deep winter now, when it is sometimes best to rest in the words of others. William Carlos Williams (1893-1963) is said to have been a leading...
Santa in the Land of Oz
Everyone will recognize Santa here, but I have a seven year old friend who can name all the others in this Oz illustration; we spent a happy hour...
Time For Giant Balloons in NYC
History can be inspiring, profound and amazing. Also fun. Want to tell a good story at the Thanksgiving table? Try these tales about the Macy’s...
The Continually Political Season
I’ve never been much of a button person, so it was something of a sea change when I sought out Harris merch. I’m putting those particular buttons...
Inspiration/Fantasy in a Political Season
For those paying attention, sometimes fevered attention, to the election this year, it can be hard to look away. It’s a kind of self-reinforcing...
Discipline in a Political Season
It’s a time for doing what we can, as this election cycle turns into the homestretch, all the competitors lengthening their strides, accelerating...
Sustenance in a Political Season
It’s a political season. We must take encouragement where we find it. Every murmured “I like your button”, every half-smile, every thumbs-up is a...
Summer Joys
Isn’t there always a day when we can feel the waning of summer and the onrush of the fall? Summer joys become even more sweet as we move inevitably...
In the Laundromat
I’ve been traveling. In a small-town commercial laundromat, I struck up a conversation with the attendant by commenting that she might find it...
An Abundance of Cherries
Midsummer in the north is full of deep pleasures and abundance. The flowers seem to be in a hurry, leaping toward perfection. The earth has to...
Poppies
I biked through a lovely little pocket park the other day, nestled at the foot of the High Bridge in Saint Paul. I was having a thoughtful day and...
Cody’s Wish
I’ve never been interested in superstars, which I suspect might be a twenty-first century distrust of the superstar mechanism. We see most of our...
Paul Revere’s Ride, the eighteenth of April
“Listen, my children, and you shall hearOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;Hardly a man is now aliveWho...
Lite-Brite from Ta-coumba, at Ten Years!
Our stately Union Depot in downtown Saint Paul includes a goodly amount of public art, works with glass and light and ceramics, and transportation...
Pigeon Sound
I don’t think of them as airborne rats, although I know many do. I like the flash of wings, and the way a flock of pigeons turns and wheels like one...
Sinister Stuffy Tree
There are trees, and there are trees, and then there is this tree, which might be called the Sinister Stuffy Tree. It stands in the front yard of...
Stuffies at Sea
The world is wonderfully surprising. Case in point: this little video, unskillfully taken with a laughing soundtrack, resulting from a discovery on...
Beauty, Right Here
Seek and find this remarkable view of downtown Saint Paul, from the public dock on Harriet Island. (Directions below.) Go at the end of the...
9/11. Live and on tape.
In our old house outside of town, I used to work out in the mornings after the kids were picked up for school. I relieved the drudgery of the...
Summer Road Trip
One of the signature aspects of the pandemic for me has been a profound sense of confinement, which may be why I’ve found such pleasure this summer...
Organic Wit
Is wit even wittier in the co-op? I think so. After all, the colors often seem brighter…the lettuce greener, the dairy whiter, the bulk foods more...
City Banter
I enjoy city banter, and the little moments of urban connection it makes. It’s downtown, and it is also somehow small town. Hello to Mr. B, whose...
Memorial Day
The war I grew up with, the Vietnam War, is history now and its events sometimes look like what you see when you accidentally put binoculars up...
Sally Rides in the Firelight
My friend Sally is nearing ninety, and for decades we’ve been laughing like loons telling each other foolish tales. (I can remember sitting in a...
Worth of a Bookstore
Sometimes someone else’s words are too beautiful not to hold and consider, and to quote, especially as we near Independent Bookstore Day. From...
Calling all Schmeckpeppers!
My aunt Jane, of beloved memory, was small, neat, and never passed up a piece of free furniture. Oh, she would say, the Depression was hard. Someone...