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Prof. Carlin

He left us over 12 years ago, but not before leaving many lessons for us, including this one, so pertinent to our times. Trigger warning: some profanity. Bigger trigger warning: much truth

My brother Nick, 11 months my junior, loves to hunt, and is quite good at it While I enjoy the product of his efforts, I myself was never able to take on the woods, armed, with any enthusiasm. I discharged a few firearms in the woods in my teens, but like John Prine sang “emptyContinue reading “trail tales”

ein prächtiges Pissoir

I hadn’t discovered blogging yet in June 2016 as Kathy and I were cruising down the Danube from Nurenburg to Budapest on the Viking Alta, but I still occasionally wrote things down for my own amusement. I found one sight at our third stop particularly inspiring. I came across the record in my leisure andContinue reading “ein prächtiges Pissoir”

commandments

My oldest brother Nick, 11 months my junior, posted this item on his Facebook page 2 days ago. I just saw it this morning. I thought it was too good not to share.

gotta die from something II

My last post, which featured findings from a study by Professor Geneveive Briand of Johns Hopkins analyzing deaths from all causes in our year of COVID, finding that while deaths attributed to COVID were up, deaths from other causes, like cancer and heart disease, were down so in the end it was sort of aContinue reading “gotta die from something II”

gotta die from something

We’re into the 10th month of this COVID thing. Early on, I discovered the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center site https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/. For a long time, I’d check it daily with the fervor of a sports nut looking up ESPN for the scores. Not so much the last couple months, so I missed last Sunday’s, whichContinue reading “gotta die from something”

My favorite holiday

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, even if I never get any presents. So simple: fantastic food, the company of family and friends, and the enforced focus on all those things for which you can be thankful, always a much longer list than you could have imagined when you first started. We should doContinue reading “My favorite holiday”

walkies

Kathy and I just returned from a most enjoyable trudge up and down the hills through the Bluffs Nature Area, off Sunset on the Northwest side or Ann Arbor right by St. Thomas Catholic cemetery not far from the sewage treatment plant, highest place in town at 1,015 feet above sea level. Only 1.8 milesContinue reading “walkies”

sunshine on my shoulders kills my COVID

I got around to reading the summer issue of my University of Chicago magazine the other day. In it was a COVID article, of course. This one, entitled “Trials by fire”, describes how U of C docs have dealt with the pandemic, not just dealing with the special needs of all the patients, and figuringContinue reading “sunshine on my shoulders kills my COVID”

simplify, simplify, simplify

That’s what my friend and high school classmate wrote back when I asked her why she’d given up her laptop for a tablet. This is what I wrote back: I think Thoreau only wrote it twice, but there is something to that. If there have been any positives from COVID, it’s that it’s forced usContinue reading “simplify, simplify, simplify”