Blog

I’ve been searching through my photographs for crowd scenes in Japan. Here’s one at a Tokyo train station: A woman, bottom right, is wearing a face mask. Perhaps she has a cold and wants to protect others, or maybe she’s protecting herself from airborne pathogens. If you look more closely, you’ll find other people wearing… Continue reading A Place Where Masks Are Apolitical

1987 May 30, 1987 We met at a birthday brunch at Rudolph’s Bar-B-Que in Minneapolis. He sat across the table from me. It was a buffet, so whenever he left the table to fill a plate, I had a chance to ask mutual friends about him. I think he did the same thing when I… Continue reading Our Elopement Timeline

Sometimes I feel I live in a walled city. The wall is roughly defined by the Interstates that circle the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area. When I cycle out from the city, beyond those “city walls,” I’m heading towards places that have rejected people like me in recent times. There was a time when I could… Continue reading Living in a Walled City

In the past few days, we made our annual trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior to hike sections of the Superior Hiking Trail. We had booked a townhouse in Tofte, Minnesota, back in the Before-Times, when Covid-19 was something that was only happening on the other side of the world. Our nephews, 11… Continue reading Snapshots: Superior Hiking Trail 2020

This week a stretch of the the Mississippi below our home dropped by twelve feet. The US Army Corps of Engineers had temporarily lowered the river between two dams so they could inspect infrastructure. They also opened one of the dams to the public. This was a rare opportunity to explore the river bottom and… Continue reading Mississippi Bottom

Every week I look forward to cycling adventures with my friend, Dave, not least because he’s a better navigator than me. He also knows his presidents, which is helpful when we explore Northeast Minneapolis. Minneapolis streets are in alphabetical or numerical order, except when they’re not. Notably, Northeast Minneapolis streets are in presidential chronological order.… Continue reading Navigating by US Presidents

A Twitter algorithm has decided I’m a bot, so I’m being prevented from posting to my daily microblog. I’ve submitted a ticket, and expect resolution eventually. This is no big deal, I won’t be hounding Twitter to get my access back. Although I’ve been posting daily for almost a decade, I do occasionally miss a… Continue reading I’m Not a Bot

I read food labels, but try to avoid foods which have labels. I’m struck by how the same ingredients show up over and over again in different products. I looked up five McCormick spice mixes online for comparison: The mixes contain ingredients we already have in the kitchen, apart from outliers like Yellow #5 and… Continue reading Minimizing Duplicate Pantry Ingredients