I wrote a while back about my changing attitude toward attending what once was the highlight of my week during the fall: joining 110,000 of my best friends in the Big House to watch my Wolverines play football (1). This growing aversion is not yet absolute, as my wife and and I joined the Homecoming crowdContinue reading “No mo’. A dozen supposedly fun things I’m no longer doing these days”
Author Archives: rike52
smokin’ JP*
Tomorrow is John Prine’s birthday. He would have been 80. He will have been dead 6 ½ years, having breathed his last 4/7/20 on a ventilator at Vanderbilt’s hospital, one of the first high profile names to be claimed by COVID. He’d acquired the bug in France, where he was completing what would be his last tour. Sure,Continue reading “smokin’ JP*”
fed up
It came to me on a trip to the dump. 2 dead microwaves made the visit imperative, and since we were going, we loaded up on the plastic, Styrofoam, and metal we’d dutifully accumulated. $18 for the privilege of unloading, and we left feeling lighter, as always. The 7 mile trip out may have gotten me revved up. AsContinue reading “fed up”
we didn’t go…
It looked like a beautiful Labor Day weekend. Temps in the 70s, a little humid, perfect for anything outdoors. And the U was providing the perfect outdoors activity: the home opener. Our Wolverines would kick off against Western’s MAC champion Broncos at 7:30 in the Big House. The night game might have been to protect the studentsContinue reading “we didn’t go…”
Martha!
Last week those of us with our nose in screens witnessed a spectacle no news feeder could resist: an old woman butchering the National Anthem before a baseball game. But it wasn’t just any baseball game, and the girl singer had won the hearts of boomers over 60 years ago. The game was the inaugural contest ofContinue reading “Martha!”
web site!
Kathy started Docere, L.L.C, around the turn of the century, initially to collect speaking fees she might be earning after her NASA years. The name is from the Latin “to teach”. She took me on after I retired as was looking for an institution to which I could tie my new business cards, which IContinue reading “web site!”
Barb’s gone
Barb had been gone over a week before we learned of her passing. It wasn’t a surprise, as we’d watched her bravely deal with ovarian cancer for several years. Kathy and I were on the South Shore from Chicago to Michigan City when she got a text announcing Barbie is gone, coming from Linda, one of myContinue reading “Barb’s gone”
no sweat!
Is it still too soon for COVID nostalgia? After all, it’s over 6 years since Gretch shut all us Michiganders out of rakes, gardening supplies, and American flags. I burned my last mask two years after that (1). The changes to our lives have been legion, and so much seems to have become permanent. Nostalgia for the days beforeContinue reading “no sweat!”
woe, woe, woe…
If George W. Bush were still commenting on social issues, he might say “is our children nuts?” With reports of 15% of children 10-19, globally, experiencing a mental illness, according to the WHO (1), and 12 million American adolescents on psychotropic medications (2), ya gotta wonder. Everything from family breakup, COVID, cell phones, the economy, and globalContinue reading “woe, woe, woe…”
Ovis aries hepar! curried!!
How did I get this chunk of lamb liver and what can I do with it? It all comes from working in a place with many multiply-talented young people. My young colleague Michelle arrived in AA with a PhD on top of her medical degree and early success in the lab, parlaying it all into her positionContinue reading “Ovis aries hepar! curried!!”
