Broad Swath

I really like declarative sentences. You could say I have a weakness for them. I'm not sure why. There is something comforting about them. You know where you stand. You probably recognize those five sentences as declarative. That was another one. I heard somewhere that declarative sentences are a foundation of good writing. That is probably self-serving. That was two more. I could go on and on. Here I go. I should rethink this. I have other things I should be doing.

This is a busy time for birthdays that I feel are worthy of our memory, if not celebration. The Trump administration and our current cultural maelstrom have breathed new life into a whole library of songs about social turmoil and resistance.  What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding comes to mind. But today is George Harrison's birthday, and over the last two years I've been listening to Beware of Darkness ...    a lot. Beware of Darkness (All Things Must Pass, 1970) Watch out now, take care Beware of falling swingers Dropping all around you The pain that often mingles In your fingertips Beware of darkness Watch out now, take care Beware of the thoughts that linger Winding up inside your head The hopelessness around you In the dead of night Beware of sadness It can hit you It can hurt you Make you sore and what is more That is not what you are here for Watch out now, take care Beware of soft shoe shufflers Dancing down the ...

I'm sitting here wondering what we're going to do to celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday.  What are your plans? A few years ago I placed a portrait of Darwin, the one shown here, in the middle of the dining room table and surrounded him with sea shells, pine cones, and skulls.  I then served a dinner that had a reasonable level of species diversity on the plates.  Dim the lamps, light the candles, and the overall effect was enchanting.  My family thought I was being weird...    again. "Just wait until Theodor Geisel's birthday," I thought. In the process of gearing up for another run at this I discovered that the five kingdoms of my high school biology class (animals, plants, fungi, protists, and monera) had been expanded.  I vaguely knew this, but I discovered additions that had escaped me, and I feel like biologists need to know they have complicated my celebration planning.  My initial idea was to map out a multi-course dinner w...

I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois - a Western suburb of Chicago.  We moved into a new house on Plamondon Court when I was five months old.  Wheaton has few claims to fame.  It is the home of Wheaton College, a Christian school so conservative that dancing was banned at campus events - unless it was square dancing.  This ban was lifted in 2003, with the statement that dancing was allowed, "as long as students use caution and good judgment and avoid any behavior which may be immodest, sinfully erotic, or harmfully violent." So...        there's that. Wheaton Central, or Wheaton Community High School as it was known before more high schools were built, has at least four famous alumni: Edwin Hubble, Red Grange, Bob Woodward*, and John Belushi.  That list may provide some balance to the college.  John graduated in 1967, appeared in the first airing of Saturday Night on October 11, 1975, and married his high school sweetheart, Judy Ja...

Jesus seems like a pretty smart guy.   I'm sure he's been thinking long and hard about the time and place of his second coming... otherwise he would have done it already. If I were Jesus I'd return on the stage of the Superbowl halftime show.  Maroon 5, or whoever ends up taking the gig, might be bummed - #upstaged.  On the other hand they'll be like, "Criticize the performance all you want - we brought Jesus." Will he even look like Jesus? I'm going to watch just to find out. I wonder if they'll go ahead and play the rest of the game.  They're going to have to because there's all those TV ads they sold.  Five million bucks for thirty seconds?  Hell yeah they're gonna play, Jesus or no Jesus. Will Jesus get to sit wherever he wants? What if the first half has been a total blowout and as the teams return to the field he starts visibly cheering for the one that's been getting killed?  I think that's what th...

Preamble:  That's a Youtube link at the bottom.  If I were you I'd view this post at a desktop equipped with speakers, and the volume turned up. Right about this time of year we decide it's OK to play Christmas music.  Unlike so much of our nation, we have held the holiday at bay to it's proper beginning. Music was part of the essence of Christmas when I was a kid.  We had one of those big, heavy wood stereo consoles with the built-in speakers and the lid that lifted up to reveal the turntable.  You could pile on a stack of discs and they would drop, one by one, and play for their entirety, providing hours of continuous music until it stopped and you would flip them all over and listen to the other sides.  I wish I could remember our Christmas music collection better.  My memory ends after Nat King Cole, Barbara Streisand, and Bing Crosby.  And I'm afraid I might have been insufficiently attentive when my Dad pointed to the box of vinyl and as...

Thanksgiving is coming.  It's not too early to start mapping out some light conversation topics.  It's also a good time to get your pumpkin on. I think pumpkin, baked and pureed at home, tastes a lot better than canned and worth the extra effort.  So... 1) Buy one or two of these. Regular pie pumpkins (Sugar Pie, Sugar Baby) aren't too hard to find.  Superior to canned, but get a "B" for color and flavor. Long Island Cheese - my current favorite.  Sometimes hard to find.  Found one at the farmer's market this year. Jarrahdale - It's gorgeous slate blue exterior and intense orange interior kills it in the aesthetics category.   Big flavor.  Hard to find around here. The Fairytale, or Musquee de Provence variety, looks interesting but I've never seen one around Madison.  Let me know if you find something you like. 2) Cut them in half. That's a really big L.I.C. 3) Bake them, cut side down, in a glass or ...

      A few years ago we paid a quick visit to Martha's nephew Max and his wife Jen in their cool San Francisco neighborhood as the start of a family spring break vacation.  We met Lily their boxador and they served us fresh pea soup from their Vitamix.  We had a lovely time, but Monday came and they were not on vacation.  So they directed us to a nearby breakfast place to fuel up before our drive south to Big Sur.  I can't remember the name.  It was a couple blocks away.  I poked around on a Google map but came up empty.  Maybe it's not there anymore.  Anyway...      We were seated near a table at which an African American woman I recognized was finishing her meal with a couple friends.  (Your chances of seeing someone famous are much higher in a cool San Francisco neighborhood than in Madison.)  I pointed her out, and Martha agreed she was somebody, but we couldn't agree on a name. ...

Notoriety can be a funny thing. Around our house Martha is notorious for stealing bed covers, rigorous dishwasher-loading methodology, believing that one can be a great navigator with a terrible sense of direction, and being late for everything except airplanes. But to her friends and family Martha is notorious for.... Snatching crackers from her brother. Being forced to sit at the dinner table for eternity, her cheeks stuffed with chewed, never-to-be-swallowed vegetables. Believing that a shoelace draped over her head was a reasonable facsimile of having long, straight hair. A perfectly organized sock drawer. Passing for under 12 at the Wellesley Community Playhouse. Her favorite getaway canoe was a 17' Grumman HIN. Buying a ticket to Portland but boarding a plane to San Francisco, then demanding an explanation from the flight attendant as to why they were landing in the "wrong" city. "And why are we landing in San Francisco?...

It started here... "Chinese Breakfast" is what Martha and I call it.  This is not in any way intended to be an authoritative introduction to what folks there eat for their first meal. Martha and I have traveled to China twice.  The first was in June of 2000 to meet and bring home our daughter, and oldest child, Lily.  Food memories are scarce from that trip.  The second was in June of 2014 as a family of four with son Owen in tow.  This was an organized tour whose priorities included some attention to food.  Some of our meals would have rightly been called feasts. Owen & Lily (right) feasting. The experience that changed meals at home, was breakfast. Several of the hotels we stayed at would organize breakfast buffets with a ridiculous variety of choices.  They had a Western table with pastries, cereals, an omelette station, sausage, bacon, pancakes, etc.  And then there was the Eastern region.  I suppose it could have been ...

My appetite for political news is insatiable. I want to be paying attention; to feel the tremor that brings you down when all the others failed; to witness that moment when your reputation syncs with the man you are.  I'm following you.

Are you a writer who needs an idea for a novel?  Here's one.  It might not be enough to carry a whole book, but it could provide the framework, or a fundamental facet of the plot.  Maybe it's the spark you need to finish something you've already started.  Last week I posted an exquisite poem about a blog being like a time machine.  In Blogger you can write a post and then set it to publish on a future date.  (Maybe that feature is for intense bloggers who need a vacation.)  Here comes the pitch.  Are you sitting down?  I am. It could be a thriller - a blogger is murdered, or disappears in some mysterious way, but their posts keep appearing after they're gone.  With each new post more clues are revealed about the killer, or secrets belonging to a gigantic agrichemical company, or to that asshole of a president.  Shortly after a post appears, readers flood law enforcement with tips and theories.  Was the blogger killed by ...