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Bonus for the Attention Deficit Minded: Random Observations and Wordplay

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  Unforgiving Revisionism  One theme that I keep coming back to is the tyranny of the present or as Ken Burns put it, “the great arrogance of the present.” We in the future look back and criticize what was done in the past. But those in the past were looking forward and trying to anticipate what the future would bring, to create principles and ideas that would last and stand the test of time. We don’t seem to have much sympathy for those in the past who are doing your best for their time in place. I wonder will those in our future have sympathy for us? Time Tax In the future, will there be a memory tax? That is, asking your outsourced digital memory to remember an event for you? Always collecting memorable names from history  Members of the 18th Century Ohio Company of Associates included Ebeneezer Sprout Anselm Tupper Band Names Curds and Whey (imagine an English retro folk band) Seditious Syntax A Wilderness of Monkeys  (credit to Shakespeare's, The Merchant of Ven...
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Road Sign Poetry and Other Thoughts 2026

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A couple times a year, I clean out my journal and memorialize some of the contents. A string of short poetry, doggeral, and observations that have no other home but to share with you here.  Road Sign Poetry We start with the stiff injunction of the red octagon halt and look both ways.  Down the road the yellow diamond featuring a gentle curved arrow  warns that the road bends ahead reduce speed before reaching the curve  someone cares enough to keep you on the right path. Then there is its cousin, with the black intersection cross  you have choices to make. And the upside down triangle of Yield -- the most misunderstood of signs  --and therefore ignored but I guess wait your turn isn’t short enough. At last there is the cool green with white typeface with distances to the cities,  great and small how many miles to your future hopes and dreams  or your safe return home.   Language and Fashion As the world becomes more casual with information...
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READING THE UPPER PENINSULA

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  Reading the Upper Peninsula My summer ended with a trip to Paradise.  Literally a drive through Paradise, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.)  The drive through Paradise lasted only a couple of minutes but it was part of a 10 day trip wandering the UP--one of the most distinctive landscapes in the Midwest. My wife and I started coming up here when we  wanted a more untamed "Great Lakes" experience from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Our most recent drive connected the rugged landscape with some of my favorite authors and their books.  North of Paradise was Whitefish Point and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. It is a suitably dramatic introduction to Lake Superior. The beach was windswept and littered with enormous trees that had been stripped and bleached into driftwood. Far offshore, a single lake freighter was leaving Whitefish Point, a reminder that this seemingly wild landscape is also part of one of the great commercial waterways of North America. The...
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  Life imitates Art. From last August, my piece on Tommy Boy Fest    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gAhekfz_FkOu3MH3HhNOV-6unfoCNKuT/view?usp=sharing
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The northwest ordinance of 1787

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As a lead up to the celebration of our America’s 250th birthday, I attended a conference on one of our lesser known but important founding documents the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Related to that, sharing some beautiful artwork that was created to mark its 150th anniversary. Have a look at these first day envelopes issued by the US Postal Service from 1937.
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FOR THE LAWYER POET AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON A DARK, SNOWY DAY

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  Jigsaw Memory You’re in someone’s memory  but they’re not in yours  Contrarwise  --someone is in your memory,  but you’re not in theirs  like a stranger’s photo  you may live on forever in the background  without intention.                    The Reasonable Person (for the lawyer-poets) Once upon a time in the 18th century The law invented the reasonable man. He was neither a saint nor a fool  neither genius nor an imbecile neither paranoid nor careless  he was a man of ordinary prudence a man of common sense. He could be blind, disabled,  a doctor, a lawyer, a factory worker,  act in an emergency act in self-defense or in the heat of passion. He is objective, not a statistic. In modern times,  he evolved to be the reasonable person. The reasonable person would never frolic and detour assume the risk suffer a depraved heart aid and abet break and enter The reasonable pers...
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