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What is this? Surely it’s not a hat. I came across this while reorganizing our kitchen drawers. It’s a tea cozy, designed to keep a teapot warm. It was 1999. I was in Glasgow, Scotland, visiting my elderly aunt. Her elegantly dressed, equally ancient neighbor presented me with the tea cozy she had knitted. The… Continue reading An Old Lady with Attitude

This winter I’ll be back in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. I will have visited Kyushu three years in a row: 2013, 2014, and 2015. I go back for the gentle subtropical climate while Minnesota’s long winter refuses to budge. Kyushu is a manageable size, about one-sixth the area of Minnesota or… Continue reading Dreaming of Kyushu

You pay attention to every item that goes into your backpack if you’re going to carry it for 330 miles (about 530 kilometers). That was my state of mind when I planned a walk around the north of England with my partner. I scrutinized every item. Does it provide sufficient value? Can I find something… Continue reading Travel Gear: Spectacle Case

I use Twitter as a microblogging tool. Because I use photographs, Twitter limits my posts to 118 characters. In that small space I can tell a story about my day. You can see the results in the sidebar to the right of this post. If you are reading this on your phone, my Twitter stream… Continue reading 7 Ways Twitter Helps My Writing

All my life I’ve allowed my audience to constrain my writing. Writing was a product for teachers, academics, engineers, customers, and decision-makers. I succeeded if I satisfied my consumers. The cage door is now open and I am free to step outside. In Life, Phase 3, life untethered from work, I get to write for… Continue reading Phase 3 Writing

In Marketing class I learned about a man who had a bunch of folding stools to sell. He first positioned them as general-purpose folding stools, but there were no takers. He sold them all when he positioned them as fishing stools. A well-positioned product connects with a specific market. With a bit of luck, the… Continue reading Travel Gear: Trekking Gloves

It was breakfast at the Granvia Okayama Hotel. The tour group at the next table murmured in agreement as the colonel railed against typographical errors in the itinerary. I pegged him as “the colonel,” now a paper-pusher, close to retirement.  It was impossible to tune him out as he recalled his first encounter with the… Continue reading Gas

I’m back in Minneapolis from my travels, so it is a priority to plan future travels.   Today I booked an entire English castle for 2016. It’s just a little castle, actually a gatehouse, it’s only for a week, and it costs about the same as two hotel rooms. I want to introduce my nephews… Continue reading Our Castle in England